Strands
by Reichenbach
Summary: Rose thinks a family reunion is a GOOD idea. The Doctor's looking for the nearest temporal disaster to crawl into, Violet just had her memory wiped and Jack gets to sort the whole mess out. Messing with strands of time is never a good thing.
1. Chapter 1

It wasn't that Violet didn't remember Owen Harper. He was a terminal git and he was hard to forget, no matter how hard one tried. It was that he remembered her. He shouldn't have—they hadn't met yet. She'd been living in a tiny one-room efficiency above a pub for nearly a year waiting for the Doctor to remember where he'd dropped her—without a ship, she might add, and come back for her. With her luck he'd have been aiming for a week after he'd left her and Greg, and would end up a decade later.

But she had time to kill. All of eternity, apparently. So she'd spent her time avoiding Torchwood and Jack, so as to not muddle time lines any more than they already had been, putting out minor fires of an alien nature and generally piddled her life away on a bar stool, never quite finding the right amount of alcohol to get herself drunk.

It was 2008. He wouldn't recognise her for…maybe another three years. Her head was a little fuzzy, so she wasn't quite remembering when last they met (or would meet). Maybe she was finally getting enough booze into her system.

"So where's your bloody nursemaid?" he asked snidely, hopping onto the red-covered stool beside her.

Tossing back another shot, she slammed down the glass. "Fuck you, Owen Harper. You shouldn't even know me yet." But when she glanced over at him, she wasn't so sure. He looked as she remembered him. Certainly he'd have been a few years younger, without the hardness around the eyes being quite so pronounced. How many had she thrown back? She needed to find out what brand this was, and how many shots she'd had. Because her mind was royally muddled. Time sense gone straight to hell.

He nodded in something resembling contentment. He would be prick enough to take pleasure in her pain. "And just how drunk are you?"

"Not drunk enough."

Ordering a drink, he leaned against the dark wood bar, regarding her with something akin to scientific fascination. She was glad she was so fucking interesting. "It's only been about four months since I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance. I think I'd remember someone as cheerful as you. Like the new digs, by the way. PVC. It's very in, this season."

Violet looked down at her jacket. A swirling cosmic blue, some crazy cross between a motor cycle jacket and…a bowling ball.

It was then that she caught a glimpse of the hair hanging over her shoulder. Blonde. "Shit," she whispered, sliding further down the bar to look at herself in the mirror. Everything was a little hazy right now, but she'd remember regenerating, right? And why the hell would Owen recognise her, if she had?

On the other side of the glass, past the half-filled bottles of booze and a touch-screen cash register, she saw herself. The self that she remembered. But with shorter blonde hair and dark brown eyes. She turned back to Owen. "What year is--" she clutched onto the bar. The world had started swimming the moment she'd tried to gauge her relative location in space-time. "It?" she finished, after taking a deep breath.

What had she done this morning? How much drinking does one have to do, to end up short two feet of hair, sporting coloured contacts and wearing a jacket that wouldn't be in style for another five hundred years?

Rubbing her head, she blinked, trying to figure it out. What was the last thing she remembered, really? Before Owen coming up to her. How much trouble could she possibly get into, without a TARDIS?

The world flew out of focus and she tried to sit down. She didn't plant herself firmly on the stool however, and slid off, crashing to the floor in a loud display. She remembered being in her room, staring at the dirty grey wood on the floor, waiting for him to come. Him who?

It was someone important. It was about Greg.

Owen grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet. "I think you've had enough."

Trying to focus, Violet licked her lips, looking around at the people watching her. "I have to talk to Jack. I think I made a deal with the devil."

XYZ

They weren't even out of the TARDIS yet, and Rose had already taken a baby wipe to Branden's face. Twice. "Where are you finding more dirt?" she asked in frustration, readjusting the weight of the infant in her arms. "Better yet, why are you putting it in your mouth?"

Branden shrugged. "Tastes funny."

Rom sighed, leaning against the ship door like it was a burden to have to wait any longer. "If it tasted funny the first time you did it, did you didn't think it would taste funny the second time you did it?"

His younger brother looked away. "It was different dirt. It was from the bottom of the console."

The baby in Rose's arms let out a little huff of indignation. "You know, you burped yourself this morning." And he'd been all proud of himself, too, as if he were the most advanced creature in the universe, simply due to his ability to rid his own tummy of excess air bubbles.

"He wants you to do it," Branden informed her as he grabbed one of the railings, swinging himself back and forth. "He likes it when you make his back rumbly and pound on it good."

It figured it was something like that. Her smart little boy Arten could burp himself but he liked it when mummy helped better. She listened when the boys told her these things, though. They were rather good at picking up on the little one's moods and desires, and even though it was technically cheating, she'd take any insight into the mind of a cranky child, psychic or otherwise.

Rubbing the baby's back, Rose gestured to the bag on the jump chair. "Rom, grab that for me. I'm all out of hands."

The boy clomped off, as if she'd asked him to push a boulder up a hill. Another day in the life.

Free hand still engaged in trying to make Arten burp, she used her heel to pull Branden away from the railing near the console. "PLEASE don't get dirty again. This is the first time we're meeting your grandmother, and you want to make a good first impression." Rose had NO IDEA why this was important, but it was—terribly so.

Looking around, she searched for the last member of the party. Sighing, she tried to decide which one to send. Rom already had the bag, he'd give her a hard time about 'doing everything,' but Branden would get lost along the way, or distracted by something shiny or cute. "Rom, give the bag to your brother and go get the Doctor. Tell him he can watch the tiny TARDISes later."

She found it about as interesting as watching paint dry. He thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. He'd spend the next hundred years watching them grow, checking the monitors and talking to them, if she let him. They had the growth and development of people who could actually talk back to worry about instead.

As she suspected he would, Rom put on 'the face,' as he stomped off, the one that let her know in no uncertain terms that this was a huge burden and that life was fantastically unfair. Oh well, it was a lesson they'd better learn early.

The baby grunted but refused to burp, almost as an act of stubbornness. It was the second-coming of Violet, and they'd better get some help before this one started walking. It had taken four adults to keep Violet in line, and even then she'd end up with her knees scraped up and something living in her pocket.

A minute and a half later, she was still patting the baby's back when the Doctor and Rom appeared in the console room. "You could have at least shaved," she informed him. This was not going to go well. She just knew it. How could it possibly go well? This was THEM.

Stopping her incessant back patting, she handed him a wipe. "And get the dirt off of your face. What were you DOING down there?"

"Eating dirt," Branden said pointedly, as if he'd been denied some great opportunity.

The frown of indignation the Doctor gave the boy could kill. "I wasn't eating dirt." And he said it as if eating dirt had never ever crossed his mind. Too bad Rose knew better. Branden already put everything in his mouth, he didn't need to learn from the shining example of the Doctor's oral fixation. Maybe if she killed him, his next incarnation would be less inclined to see instilling bad habits in small children as a hobby of sorts.

Rose sighed. It was just dirt? What was the fascination?

Violet had an enthrallment with mud pies and everything filthy, but still…sometimes she missed having a girl. They could…be girls together. Paint nails, dress in pink…

Oh well. As if she didn't have her hands full enough with this lot….now Rom was growling like a dinosaur and making Branden screech as he was chased by the boy, who was dragging the bag of baby things behind him. Of course, the Doctor was scratching his chin, like the display was some kind of experiment and he should be taking notes instead of stopping them.

It was time to set everyone straight. Rose slapped the baby's back, and he let out the belch of the damned. "If my mother thinks we're anything other than happy, nice, calm people, I will cause you all to regenerate where you stand."

The boys stopped in their tracks and the Doctor dropped his hand to his side. They looked at her, trying to judge the seriousness of her reaction. Was this a 'no cake' type threat, where they had cake anyway, or would she really kill them all?

She glared at each of them in turn. "I'm serious. I do NOT want my mother going on about how I'm raising savages." Then she grinned and the Doctor looked at her as if she were mad. "Now. Lets have fun."

Shaking his head, the Doctor walked past her and opened the TARDIS door. "I'd say you're as mad as she is, but you'd just hit me again," he muttered, holding the door for Rom and Branden, who shot out into the sunlight as if they'd never seen it before.

Before Rose could make a smart remark about him having already said it, Arten sighed, almost apologetically, and threw up rancid milk all over her shoulder.

She'd remind him of this, when he was older. In front of his first girlfriend, maybe.

XYZ

Violet had passed out in Owen's car and didn't wake until he was looking her over at the Hub. She knocked his hand out of the way to get the pen light out of her eyes then rubbed her face, sitting in the most uncoordinated fashion. "Stop it."

When she tried to stand up, she very nearly ended up face-first on the floor again, which could have been seen as somewhat fitting. "Just settle down," he told her as he tried to force her back into a sitting position on the examination table. Granted most of his patients were dead when they were on this slab, but he worked with what he had.

She looked at him, trying to focus, and it took her a full ten seconds to recognise him. Interesting. "Wait. No. I can't be here. What year is it? It's only 2008, so I can't--" It was like they were having this moment of realisation for the first time.

Jack helped him sit her back down. "Hey, kiddo. Calm down. It's a little bit later than that, so you're ok. No time lines exploding or anything like that. What's the last thing you remember?"

Her hand twisted around the material of Jack's shirt as she thought about it. "I was…I don't know. I was by the water. It was sunset… no. I was drinking. There was a man…" she slumped against him, unconscious again.

Owen looked to his boss for an explanation.

Jack let the woman slide gently back onto the table. "Ok. I think I know what's happened to her. But I have to try this one more time, to be sure." He slapped her cheek gently. "Violet. Vi—can you wake up, kiddo?"

She opened her eyes again and she slowly focused on Jack, then tried to sit up. "Violet, take it easy. You're at Torchwood. What's the last thing you remember?"

"Captain Jack?" She had no memory of the last five minutes. "You can't be here…I can't be here… I have to go…"

He held her down until she stopped struggling. "You're not going anywhere. You're fine, everything's fine. The time lines are fine. Just relax a minute." Fortunately she did seem to settle enough that he could take a step back to speak to Owen. "She's had her memory wiped. No telling how long she's lost. And she's going to keep losing it until she stops trying to remember."

Owen didn't take his eyes off of her. She was asleep again, lying on her side with a look of consternation tugging at her thin lips and creasing at her eyes. "What?"

Jack gave a sad nod in her direction. "I've got some pretty good experience with this. First hand, you could say. Standard Time Agency memory wipe, done by the book. Take an hour, or a day, preserve the time line, keep the locals from figuring things out when they interfere… But it looks like they took too much. Usually a good night's sleep will fix it, like with Retcon. But if they take too much…say, a couple of years… it can take WEEKS to come out of it. You just keep kind of…wandering around in your old life, like a zombie, and every time you start thinking about it or something reminds you of it, it's like hitting the reboot button. You're right back where you started."

Folding his arms across his chest, Owen pondered the problem at hand. "Well, then whatever she's involved in, it's Torchwood territory now. Right before she completely lost it, she said she needed to talk to you, that she was afraid she'd made a deal with the devil."

Shifting slightly, Jack tried not to show his agitation. "I don't want to jump to conclusions. She doesn't remember what she did—it could have been anything. She might have never gotten around to doing what she's afraid she did, she might have done something a thousand times worse. I guess what I'm saying is…we need to keep all possibilities in mind. But a girl with no time ship doesn't end up with a wardrobe like that without…assistance."

It wasn't just the swirling blue jacket that gave that away…the boots had a slightly green crackle effect in the leather, which was typical for the hide of an animal not found on Earth, but became very popular at some point in Earth's near-future. The jeans were a close-cut fit with some give in the joints and the shirt sticking out from under the jacket was an oversized muslin in a large weave that lacked that mass-produced touch, probably from about five hundred years in the past. Whatever she'd been up to, she'd been well-travelled.

Running a hand through his hair, he let out a deep breath. It figured, the Doctor wouldn't be in this universe at the moment to help him sort this. If it involved the Time Agency it could be very serious. "Alright. We need to figure out what she was up to. At least we need to figure out how long she's been wandering around in her old life. Find her other half—he can probably tell us how long she's been out of circulation, of course, that stuff is relative with time travel… but someone had to have noticed she was gone."

Nodding, Owen pulled out his phone. "I guess that means we need to get everybody in here."

"Pretty much. The sooner we start playing damage control, the sooner we can go beat her memories out of some jackass field agent with more ambition than brains." They might have thought they had something special with a Time Lord under their control. But you didn't mess with Jack's friends. You got a shitstorm levelled upon you, if you did that.

TBC…


	2. Chapter 2

"Branden, why're your shorts inside-out?" Rose didn't really want the answer to that question, but it probably needed to be asked anyway. They'd been crossing the lawn (why the Doctor couldn't have just materialised inside the house, she wasn't entirely sure), when he'd gotten ahead of her, and she'd noticed the seam running right down the middle.

He looked down at his tan shorts, like his mother was being unreasonable. "They work better that way."

She looked over the sleeping baby in the harness on her chest to the Doctor. "Fix him. That's just what I need, my mother seeing that." It had been bad enough that Rose had to change shirts before they'd even gotten out of the TARDIS. "Rom, put that rock down." She had even odds that he wanted to brain his little brother with it, or just wanted to collect it. Either way, it was dirty. "Don't wipe your hands on your shirt. You're killing me. You're all killing me slowly."

About four seconds after that, she realised the Doctor was not fixing Branden's bottom. "Well, what're you waiting for?"

He glanced over at her, like he'd heard her for the first time. "You to unlax. She's your mother. Its not like her love for you is somehow conditional on how well your children are behaved, and whether Branden's trousers are on his body in a socially accepted manner. She'll have them hopped up on sugar in fifteen minutes and we'll spend the next three days trying to get them to take a nap. So no, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter if they're dirty or whatever. Besides, I don't want to give her a false impression of what to expect from them. If they show up clean and well-behaved, she'll expect that all the time. Which is simply unrealistic. We'll be lucky if they only bring the house down around her ears."

She scowled at him. "You could have shaved."

Rubbing his cheek, he looked away, quite pleased with himself. "Consider it a slapping cushion. I'm sure she'll have something to go after me for."

In his sleep, Arten began moaning his displeasure. "You just always think of something, don't you?"

"I'm planning on finding some universal crisis to defuse in half an hour or so. So no, I really don't care if Branden shows up on her door step naked and covered in war paint."

Branden drew a breath to tell his mother how he thought that was an excellent idea when she glared at him. He went back to clomping across the immaculate summer-green lawn. The Doctor really could have parked closer.

Rose chuckled with a sarcastic sweetness. "You're not leaving me alone with them and my mother."

The Doctor put his hands on the two older boys arms and pushed them apart before they could start 'accidentally' ramming into each other, which would no doubt end with them in a scuffle in the grass. "YOU are the one who wanted to come here. I have my own universe to deal with. I've never seen you this worked up. So really, what's this all about?"

Readjusting the hat on the baby's head, she glanced over at the Doctor. "Can't we just have one day where nothing happens?"

The boys got too close to each other again and the Doctor stepped between them without a word about it. Sliding his hands into his pockets, he kept pace with them, making sure they didn't spontaneously start killing each other (it was just that time of day). "Probably not. I'm sure it's POSSIBLE. However, it's just…highly unlikely."

Finally making it to the front door in broad daylight without anyone being alerted, or anything like that, Rose pressed the doorbell. "Alright, kids." But she looked from Rom and Branden to the Doctor as well. He made a face. "Best behaviour. Just this once."

Branden dug his toe into the ground. "Like when we went to Bwenn, an' Rom 'sulted the 'basidor an' we spent the night in the dungeon?"

The Doctor put his hand on the boy's head. "Something like that'll happen, I suspect." He was looking at Rose when he said it, though, making it abundantly clear that he didn't understand why she was turning this into a life-or-death situation. "And Jackie'll make us all eat her cooking and then we'll be in heaps of trouble."

Just as the door opened, Rose's heel clipped him in the shin.

XYZ

There were days when Jack wanted to kick someone's teeth in. Violet, he wanted to just slap silly. She was a Time Lord. She grew up travelling with the Doctor. She should have known to steer clear of the Time Agency.

Mostly he wanted to rearrange the dental work of whoever had taken her memories. He knew the sting of having that part of yourself taken away, of not knowing what you'd done or who you'd become in that time. And whoever had done it… they either didn't know what they'd had in Violet, or had taken advantage of her ability to see timelines before tossing her back to her old life.

He just stood there, in Owen's autopsy room, arms folded across his chest, watching her sleep off what he'd just put her through. The constant rebooting the mind scrambler had initiated would take a bit to wear off, then he could begin again. Until then, he had to watch her, to make sure she didn't wake up and start wandering about, trying to remember. Trying to step backwards through her own mind would only cause her to reboot herself again, and they'd be right back where they started.

For a moment, he'd cursed the Doctor not being here. But it was only a moment. He and Violet weren't getting along (it was a relationship he still did not understand the complexities of), and whatever she'd been through, the Doctor would no doubt make it worse by trying to 'set her straight.' Jack had been where she was about to go…it'd be better if she didn't go it alone, but he wasn't sure the Doctor would be helpful to her.

Rose'd probably box the girl around the ears for being so stupid, but she'd be there for her. The Doctor… Well, he remembered the state of things when the whole bunch of them had left after the incident with the TARDISes. The Doctor…sometimes left Jack in awe. Other times…reminded Jack that the Time Lord was much more human than he liked to let on.

He heard Gwen come down the steps into the autopsy room, but he didn't acknowledge her until she was next to him. "What've we got?" he whispered, still looking at the curled and sleeping figure on the metal slab.

Gwen handed him a file folder. "The bad news, or the worse news?"

Without responding, Jack looked at what they had. No, they wouldn't be asking Greg what had become of her—he was dead, January 2008. And in one of the most mundane ways, if the police report was to be believed: a car with bad tyres and a patch of black ice. It must have burned Violet to no end. A whole universe trying to kill them, and he's taken down by a bit of bad weather and a car with two-wheel drive.

The other side of the folder contained Gwen's hand-written notes after talking to Violet's former landlord. She'd up and disappeared in late 2008 and had spent three years missing. Then one day she'd simply wandered into his bar and plopped herself back on the bar stool and picked up drinking again as if nothing had happened. She'd seemed dazed though, and he thought she might be on drugs. But she had money for rent and he had another spare room. That had been her life for the last month, the pathetic thing—a ghost, condemned to repeat a routine.

"And what she's been doing in the interim is anyone's guess," Gwen whispered as Jack closed the file. "Whatever it is, it's been hard living."

Even in sleep, she lacked the ease of the person he'd last seen four months ago. Back then, Violet had a look about her denoting a past she was trying to come to terms with. But this new…thing, whatever it was…it was etched around her eyes, like she'd given up trying. The sad part was that this was on top of a potential three-year gap where she could have done anything at all.

Jack thought she was stupid as all hell, getting herself mixed up with the Time Agency. But he pitied the poor creature. Even without hearing her version of things, he knew she was a mess. He couldn't help but note just how…human it all was.

Slowly, Violet started to come around again. He absolutely had to do this in the right order, otherwise they'd be right back where they started—she'd be wondering what the hell he was doing in 2008, her memory would reboot, and she'd pass out again. It was how that stuff worked. If you tried to fill in the blanks, it would wipe you out, until you eventually stopped trying.

She rubbed her eye and yawned, stretching a leg. Before she could look around, he put a hand soothingly on her hair, the way Rose always did with the boys, when she was comforting them after a bad dream, or a skinned knee. "Hey there. You're ok. You had a bit of an accident." That was putting it nicely.

When she tried to sit up, he kept a firm hand on her shoulder. "You're ok. You're at Torchwood. Do you remember what happened after you left here with the Doctor and your mum?"

Her contact-coloured eyes came to focus on him after a moment. "Mum wanted to know what we were disagreeing about. She got mad when we wouldn't tell her…" Rubbing the side of her head, she slowly came back to herself. "He actually got the date right-ish. About a week after we left. Can you believe, we didn't even have to tell his parents about the time travel? Apparently a little sex is enough to put hair on the chest of people in their family."

Violet looked past him as she spoke, something very distant about her memories, as if they had happened to someone else. At this point…they might as well have.

Jack rubbed her arm, trying to keep her as calm as possible. It was more progress than he'd have hoped for so quickly. He'd had to drag himself out of this, though. She at least had the benefit of his guidance. "What was his family like when you got there?"

"Crazy. Just constant chaos. He has four sisters and two brothers. Always in and out of the house." She closed her eyes and let out a long breath, and he was almost afraid she'd gone back to sleep. "His dad wanted to kill him. Even if I was an alleged heiress. His mum was heartbroken we eloped at first. Then she felt better that I'd 'done right' by her son. Then she started trying to feed me. All the time. Did you know food is love? It is, apparently. It's why his mum is so…wide. I didn't say that. He'll kill me. I've never seen such a mama's boy. Or anyone who paid his parents so much lip service. He's rather passive-aggressive, you know…"

Oh shit. He'd had her step back so far, she didn't remember he was dead. Which meant she was going to go through it all over again, when she remembered. Maybe he could try this again later? Maybe he'd get it right, then.

Leaning against the table, he rubbed her back in between stroking her hair and brushing her cheek with the back of his finger. God, what had she done to her hair? The long dark hair…suited her much better in this form. This blonde mess was fried and her roots were showing. It didn't look natural on her. In fact, when Owen had brought her in, at first he'd thought it was Rose, who also (coincidently) looked better as a brunette.

With his lips just above her cheek, he whispered, "why don't you rest now? We can talk about the rest later."

Within a few moments, she was out again. This time it was a light sleep, more of a nap than her brain rebelling against itself.

Stepping away from the table, Jack ran a hand through his hair. Damned stupid kids.

Of course, she wasn't a kid. She was at least twenty-nine now. Who knew how long the Time Agency had her. Then again, if the Doctor was around a thousand, that meant she was barely in Time Lord adolescence. Which meant there was much more dangerous stupidity to come.

Lucky him.

XYZ

The Doctor was certain Jackie's high-pitched squeal at seeing Rose and the children had punctured his eardrums. They HAD to be bleeding after that.

Of course, when she'd first come to the door, she'd thought it was Violet, and was scolding her granddaughter for leaving something a mess last Sunday before she even reached the door. There'd been a second of surprise—not so much disappointment as just…shock that it wasn't who she thought it should be…. And then the high-pitched howling had started.

Jackie had to be what? Sixty-some-ish? And she still looked the same as when he last saw her. Well, not exactly, the same. He could see the bits she'd had nipped and tucked and tugged. Modestly so, which made him admire her self-restraint. With the type of access Jackie Tyler had to cosmetic surgery in this universe, it was a wonder she wasn't a smooth and slightly freakish specimen ready for a travelling show more than a night in public.

She'd descended upon Rom and Branden without so much as a hello to Rose, or even acknowledging the Doctor's existence, which he was largely ok with. Every time Jackie noticed him, it ended badly. Or at least, that was his memory of their acquaintanceship.

Rassilon, it had been two whole lifetimes since the first time Jackie Tyler had slapped him silly. This was actually Rose's second go at motherhood. Hell, this was his own second chance (in recent memory) to warp little minds and make them hate him.

Well, Susan hadn't hated him. She'd actually done a fair bit of taking care of him, back in that first life when he'd been so damned certain of everything, including himself. Granted, he and Susan had gotten into some fantastic rows over everything from food replication to what he should do with her two snooping schoolteachers.

Ahh those were the days.

Back when you could just have a screaming match and a hug followed by some tea and all was well. He didn't have to worry about someone like Violet running around on the verge of creating a temporal anomaly to save someone whom history says cannot be saved.

It was why he'd left her and Greg without a TARDIS. It was an easy trick to retrieve her ship, but he'd be damned if he let her muck about in time and space while she was feeling the initial stings of grief. She'd get her ship back when she could contain herself better. Rose thought it made him a bit of a bastard…but she didn't understand how much relied upon Violet getting her head together and acting rationally. If anyone, Rose would understand it. But for some reason…he just couldn't bring himself to tell her of just what they'd gone through, digging through Violet's mind. Why trouble her with it?

"Well, aren't you going to answer me?"

The Doctor's head snapped up and he met Jackie's laser beam eyes. "Huh?"

Rose's elbow caught him in the chest. He was just taking all the abuse today, wasn't he? "Mum wants to know if you're taking care of me properly."

"Why would I do that? Rose can take care of herself." Then the Doctor saw the look in Jackie's eyes. "I mean—completely. She's only been hunted by aliens once this week--" he shut up abruptly. That wasn't making Jackie happy either, if those creases at the corners of her smoothed-out eyes were any indication. "That wasn't my fault. That was Jack's fault, and I'm not taking the blame for that. I'd like to point out how I rescued both of you…"

Branden let out a high-pitched howl at something his brother did. Digging both hands into Rom's big wavy hair, he grabbed hold and began pulling furiously. The older boystomped on Branden's foot, grinding his toes into the cement as he let out a howl of anguish at having the hair ripped from his head.

Without a word, the Doctor stuck his arms between them, put a hand on each of their faces and pushed them apart. He gave an innocent smile to Jackie, who was tsking as she grabbed the baby out of Rose's carrier.

Sighing, the Time Lord gave up. "I have a thing. Back at the ship."

Rose's eyes flicked between anger and desperation. What the hell had gotten into her? Maybe it was just Jackie. Maybe the older woman had an aura of making people angry and weird if you stepped into it. But it only worked on women.

He scratched the back of his neck. "You go on, you all catch up. I'm going to…repark the TARDIS. No sense in having it a million miles away when…" when they needed it for something. Like a quick escape. "I think I just sensed an anomaly in the time stream. Or something."

Without trying to improve upon the excuse, he took off across the lawn, as fast as his legs would take him. Rom informed him, in words he'd thank Jack for later, that he was a 'real douchebag.' Didn't stop him though. There was a time to stand and fight and there was a time to run with your tail between your legs.

Unfortunately it meant that Rose was probably going to follow through with that making him regenerate on the spot thing, when he dared show his face again.

TBC…


	3. Chapter 3

"She still not awake?" Owen asked from the doorway, flashing a handful of papers.

Jack shook his head. "She woke up, I took her back too far. It was about to get messy, so I freaked out and put her back to sleep. Shit. Where the hell's the Doctor when you need him?"

Coming down the steps casually, like there was a touch of snideness in his step, he handed over the papers. "Like we need his lot. If it weren't for him, we'd not have this problem deposited on our doorstep."

Glancing down at the printouts, Jack tried to skim but couldn't concentrate. "And just what were YOU doing in that neighbourhood? That place isn't good enough to be one of your usual haunts."

Owen shrugged, leaning against one of the tabletops. "Was talking to one of my sources. Said there was a weird chick drinking like a fish. Someone put something she didn't like on the jukebox and she took out a little blue penlight and made the thing explode. Figured it was worth looking into."

Jack looked her over. Still on her side on the table, still asleep. It wasn't something she'd do, in the time he'd known her. She was rather good at finding trouble, but she also longed to fit in. Showing off wasn't her thing unless she was pushed to it, and it didn't seem as if she had been, in that circumstance. Well, it wasn't like he'd never done anything stupid after having his memories stripped, no-siree-bob. He was being much more forgiving on this one than a certain Time Lord would be.

Even if it would be easier for the Doctor to just go into her mind and set it right.

Looking over the toxicology report, he pointed to the chemicals he was familiar with. "That's it right there. That's the base I used for Retcon. That's what the Time Agency uses when they want to make people forget. There are a few other things here I don't recognise. Maybe their formula doesn't work on Time Lords and they had to spike it? But whatever this is, we should probably look into it further. Might tell us a little more of what the story is."

Nodding, Owen took the paperwork back. "There are a few other things I can probably only confirm with a full exam, but I ain't going near her with a ten foot pole right now. That's all I need, her waking up half way through that and ramming her fist down my throat."

With a sigh, Jack rubbed his eyes. Very long day so far. "Yeah. It'd be more trouble than it's worth. Probably the same can be said for when she's awake, too." He glanced over at Owen. "I guess I better try this again. The sooner we have her up and around, the sooner we can start figuring out what the hell's been screwed with in the time stream."

Owen left him to his work. While the other man wasn't above kicking someone he didn't like while that person was down, he didn't want to stick around incase it got messy or emotional. That was just something Owen just didn't like at all.

Waiting a few more minutes, he woke her again with the same reassurances that she was safe, that she was at Torchwood and the timeline was all right. In a tactic change, he asked what she remembered after moving into the efficiency above the bar.

It worked out better. Violet looked grief-stricken and exhausted, but her eyes seemed a bit more in focus. "I moved there after… well. His mother blamed me. He'd have been at university and he'd have been safe if it wasn't for the likes of me." Her hand went to her cheek, as if she'd been slapped. "We'd been staying with them three months. The day after the funeral, I came back to the house and the few things I had with me were on the lawn, in the mud. In the rain. She said if I really was as great as Greg said I was, I'd be fine on my own."

When she wiped tears from her eye Jack couldn't help but have pity on her. The kid had rubbed him the wrong way the last time they'd been around each other (he'd killed Jack twice in one day which had been REALLY aggravating), but he knew that they were crazy about each other. It was a damned shame, really. The Doctor had been given a second chance, and Violet wouldn't have that luxury. There was a finality in death that apparently didn't apply to people trapped in other dimensions.

He had a feeling that he knew where this story was going, but he urged her to continue on anyway.

Pulling her arm under her head as a makeshift pillow, Violet closed her eyes to keep the tears at bay. "So I found a place. Drank myself silly for a couple months, then came up with a plan. Went to Mexico. There's a temporal drop-box there. Went back to my new 'home' to wait. Took the Time Agency four months to send someone. I got word he was coming, and I was waiting in my room, staring at the floor…" she sighed. "Hazy after that. Lying on a hill at night, fire fight. It was cold, but it was summer… No. We were in the belly of a big iron ship. In space."

Sitting on the table beside her, Jack tried to think of what Rose would do that would be comforting. Other than brushing his hand over her hair again, he couldn't think of anything. "Do you remember who he was? What he looked like?"

Opening her eyes, she stared at the tile wall in front of her. "No. It's a big…blank."

He waited a moment, trying to brush his fingers over her hair in a soothing manner, since this was the part where it got unpleasant. "What did you offer them, in exchange for Greg?"

XYZ

Promptly upon entering the TARDIS, the Doctor nearly broke his own neck, stepping on Branden's wooden train engine. See this, this is what he was talking about when he…

Never mind.

What the hell was he doing here? Besides hiding. It was fine, usually. Travelling. A little weird now that they needed to make sure all the little creatures that couldn't take care of themselves were cared for and not eaten or blown up. It had been an interesting adventure with Rom, and a second one had added another layer to the intrigue. He wasn't quite sure how three was going to work out. This was their first time out, and it was already...weird. Which really was the best word he could come up with.

Kicking the train across the console room, he leaned against the railing, staring up into the coral ceilings. This had been entirely different with Violet. They'd been travelling companions, occasionally best mates. He'd been her teacher, she'd been his student. Everything had been ok.

Well, he saw how THAT had turned out. She'd already regenerated once, had been tortured into loathing humanity and was on the verge of becoming a temporal problem he had to deal with.

What was he going to do? Stop travelling? They could barely handle walking across the back lawn. How would they handle the universe?

More importantly…what the hell was he even DOING? He hadn't even been thinking beyond Rose wanting another child last time. She'd wanted something, he'd wanted to make her happy. Oh, he could catalog the list of stupid things he'd done to make her happy, starting with taking her to see her dead father. He should have known better. He HAD known better. But he did it anyway.

But he'd never really been all that great at following the rules, had he? His TARDIS had been more… liberated than assigned to him. He'd started hanging out with humans on a whim, and kept it up because it irritated the Time Lords. Oh yeah and he happened to like the funny little things.

Half the things he'd ever done in his life were because it might irritate someone on Gallifrey. Now there was no Gallifrey. No one to irritate.

No one to stop him.

That had always kind of been the thing. They didn't necessarily like him. But they tolerated him. Maybe saw his function in the universe as a necessity. But he'd always known, if he got too far out of line…too dangerous… they'd be there.

Now he had a handful of miniature Time Lords who all happened to be the most un-Time-Lordy type creatures he'd ever encountered. He supposed it was due to all the excessive exposure to humanity. Or maybe it was the lack of community rearing and early indoctrination into the Gallifreyan culture. But it kind of terrified him. That's what kept a Time Lord in line—the rules, the Senate, the stuffy, overbearing and pompous nature (oh Rassilon, he WAS getting old if he was siding with the Time Lords on things like RULES and CULTURE). All of those things were courtesy of Rassilon who drew them out of the dark ages. Pomp and circumstance kept people with that much power from being savages…

Now the only Time Lords roaming the universes happened to have his own reckless feelings towards things like rules and convention. That was dangerous.

Once again he'd acted before he'd thought about the consequences, and it would probably be the universe that suffered.

He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to swallow the dread rising up within him. He'd told Violet this was all temporary. Everything with Rose, all of this. It was true. Nothing lasted forever. The boys would eventually leave. He'd be alone again. But in the mean time, he had this…interesting interlude. One he couldn't dare bring himself to enjoy.

Maybe he could leave them here. Come back in a bit. Rose was catching up with her mother. The boys were meeting Jackie and Pete for the first time. They were all OK right now, right like they were. If he timed it right, they'd never even notice he was gone…

And go where?

Exactly.

He began pulling levers and twisting knobs on the console to repark the TARDIS inside the home on the other end of the immaculate lawn. Rose had been mad at him for where he'd put the ship down. Well, Jackie may be living at home, but she was still the wife of the president. He needed to park far enough away to scramble security with the TARDIS' external scanners. It was why they'd made it all the way across the lawn without so much as a notice, all the way up to the front door of that imposing house. Of course, he probably should have told her that.

It was always the details that tripped him up. But he'd been thinking about itty-bitty TARDISes the size of thimbles and everything else had just gone right out of his head. Oh they were the most adorable things ever. Teeny tiny TARDISes (say that ten times fast) with one eency weency room a piece, and they were growing in his ship. It was like… kittens. But cuter. And without the claws.

They made him sort of giddy inside. Kind of the opposite of how he felt when he looked at Arten…which was filled with dread.

Stopping the ship in the back of a room that appeared to be unused, he sighed, wondering if it was him or Rose that was in the weirder mood. She'd gone around the bend as soon as she had started planning this trip to see her mother. And she'd been the one doing all the planning. He'd thought about trying to talk her out of it until Arten was a little older, but she'd been bitten by some sort of bug and was not going to be happy unless this was his first trip in the TARDIS. They couldn't just do a day trip to the near future—oh no. His first adventure needed to be through the Void and into an entirely different dimension.

He wandered out of the ship casually, not feeling better about things, necessarily, just a tad more resigned. Coming down the steps, he heard enough ruckus coming from the kitchen to assume everyone was there. The thing about Rom and Branden—if they were alone, they were quiet. If they were in the same room, it was chaos.

Arten…who knew where he'd fit in, in the grand scheme of things. Right now he was four months old and a pudgy mass of babyflesh that Rose had deemed 'edible.' He supposed it was some human comparison level of cuteness, but he found the whole idea of eating babies to be a little disturbing. Well, unless they were made out of sugar and gelatin. If that was the case, they were just good eating.

Even before he made his way into the kitchen area, he could hear Arten gurgling on his own dribble. Oh well. If he was doing that, he wasn't crying, which was a different thing than how he usually was. Babies were so much work. He really didn't understand why Rose would go through all the pain and trouble of giving birth, sleepless nights and the constant tending, and then, when they were finally out of that stage of needing constant attention, and had just become interesting, she'd start wanting another one.

Well, there was biology to consider. Human females were chemically programmed to want more children. It was why they slobbered and cooed over every baby they saw. But he was really putting his foot down, this time. He didn't care how much she drooled over the nearest purple tentacley baby the moment Arten turned three. He didn't care if they had six infant TARDISes in their care—that didn't mean there needed to be Time Lords to fill each of those ships. What was so bad with having one or two in reserve? Just incase?

More Time Lords had just been… a mistake.

He stopped outside the kitchen, leaning against the wall. Had he really just thought that? Sure, it was pretty stupid on his part—a handful of Time Lords with his sense of disregard for anything resembling order—but what was done was done. It was a little late to regret it—it wasn't like he could put the little people back in Pandora's Box, hide the thing away in the attic and pretend like he'd never been so foolish.

And really…when it came down to it…Rose could ask him to cut out one of his hearts and he probably would. Just because she asked nicely.

Jackie cooed over Arten, making those sounds women made, and the Doctor rubbed his forehead, trying to work up the resolve to go in there and deal with…this. It was all in his own head anyway. They were there, and he just had to accept that. He'd had nine years to have this panic attack, now just wasn't a good time.

She told him what a big boy he was in a voice that almost made the Doctor gag. Did women really need to do that? Really?

"OOH! Oh! Jackie! Jackie!" He could hear Branden slapping the woman's arm. "I want anudder one. A chocolate one…"

Jackie and Rose both sighed. "That isn't what she's called, Branden."

Branden thought about it for a moment. If it was possible to hear the gears turning in the boy's head, the Doctor could do it. "But that's what she calls herself. In her brain. Mum is mum and the Doctor is the Doctor and Gran is Jackie. In her brain."

"She's still your grandmother, and that's what you should call her," Rose corrected patiently.

She really was good with them. She took all of their childhood complexes in stride, even the ones that were due to their alien heritage. Back when they'd been travelling together the first time around, he'd never really pictured her as a mother. He figured she'd leave him at some point for family and marriage and all those human things. But he'd never really imagined her doing it.

The second time around he figured that she'd been forced into motherhood and that was the only reason she'd been through it all. It never really occurred to him that she'd actually…liked it. And would want more of it. They were little people. And they were such hard work.

Jackie made another noise that could have been a sigh or a tsk or something in between. "Is that why you call him that?"

"Uhh huh. But how comes the Doctor calls me Booger an' Rom Porkchop then? Grownups're weird." The boy giggled. "He's real weird. He's listenin' outside."

Rose let out one of those full-bodied laughs that he considered to be so precious. "Feel like joining us? We have biscuits."

"They're kosher and everything," Rom yelled.

"You're not Jewish," the Doctor reminded the boy for the thousandth time, before he could stop himself. But he didn't go into the kitchen. Because…suddenly he knew why he was feeling this way. Something was wrong, and for a change, it wasn't him. "Gotta go again! Universe in danger type stuff! Be right back!"

And without any further explanation, he legged it back to his ship.

TBC…


	4. Chapter 4

Rose sighed, but let the Doctor go. "He's been like this since last week. Jack wanted to spend some time before we left, and we ended up getting…involved in something, and he's just been unbearable since then." She reached over to where her mother was sitting and wiped the spittle from the baby's chin. He seemed to produce enough of it to drown a grown man.

Rubbing the little guy's bald head, Jackie frowned. "It's always something with him, isn't it?"

Laughing, she picked Branden's biscuit off the table and put it back on his plate. Some day he'd learn how to eat like a civilised person. Till then… well, it was Rose's lot in life to look after tiny clueless Gallifreyans. A large one too. "And he had the nerve to call me paranoid this morning. Rom…" she didn't even finish the thought. The boy stuck his arm back through the armhole of his shirt and tugged it down over his round little belly. "He'll get out of it. One way or another." By hook or by crook, mostly. "What've you been doing?"

Still fully invested in the baby in her arms, Jackie slid her finger into his hand, making more noises. She glanced at Rose. "The endless duties of the wife of the president."

Rose arched an eyebrow, wondering how that was working itself out. She'd seen the extra staff, and no sign of Pete, and wondered if they were having troubles. "And you're staying here, all by yourself?"

The older woman shrugged, an innocent smile tugging at her neutral painted lips. "We figured out a few months in that I actually see more of him if he has to come here to visit. It means he needs to set aside time for it, so there're no distractions. Well, less distractions."

Upstairs, the TARDIS made the scraping sounds of a hasty departure. Rom licked his fingers and shook his head. "This is why we should just live with Uncle Jack all the time."

"You're not living with 'Uncle Jack' all the time," Rose reiterated yet again. "And you can't have a dinosaur." Might as well just head that one off before the boy started in on it. Other kids asked for a dog. Rom wanted a dinosaur, under the premise that the TARDIS was big enough for it.

The boy looked up at his grandmother in excitement. "He's way better than the Doctor. He has a dinosaur, and he's Batman!"

Branden crawled up onto his knees, leaning on the table with excitement. "And he's a ninja! Batman's a ninja, did you know that? Uncle Jack's a ninja! And he has a dinosaur!" With the last, Branden tried to stand up, but ended up falling off the chair and landing on his backside, hard. This, of course, made him sniffly.

Rose put her arm around the boy before he could start whining. She looked to her mother for sympathy. "They've been going on and on for weeks about Jack being Batman. You'll never convince them otherwise." Her face softened a little. "They're just irresistible, aren't they?" she whispered to her mother, since saying it out loud would embarrass the boys and they'd complain again. "I could just gobble them right up."

Even through her obvious annoyance, Jackie failed at swallowing a chuckle. "If you say so. I see too much of him in them."

Rose's cheek twitched with a repressed laugh as Branden began flapping one arm in an effort to get away from his mother. "You never used to say that about Violet." Oh her mother had been living in happy denial land back then. After that day she'd told her mother she was pregnant, the subject of who she was pregnant by never came up ever again.

Trying to wrestle her finger from the baby's mouth, Jackie glanced at her daughter. "That's because I wasn't looking. But she's another one. She left things all over the basement last Sunday and she hasn't come around to collect them yet. I don't know who she thinks she is."

Rose almost tried to explain, but then thought better. Sometimes she completely understood why the Doctor left things out of his little stories. There were times when details were simply tedious. "I'll tell her to pick up her things when we pick her and Greg up." She explained as quickly as possible (and with as few of details as possible) the whole incident with the mating ships, and how they'd had to spend a week and a half retrieving Violet's ship out of the Vortex after they'd taken her to Greg's family.

During that whole conversation, she just kind of kept Branden's head buried in her chest so he couldn't add his thoughts on getting psychically invaded by his own home or his part in stopping the madness. She managed to lock eyes with Rom and deter him from giving his grandmother any additional details regarding the affair. Fortunately, for once in his life, he didn't feel like being contrary. She would mark the day in her diary.

Jackie actually laughed at the idea of Violet being land-locked. "She's always coming and going so fast from here. I bet you a week of going back to being in one place in one time will make her crazy. I still don't know how she managed to stay put as long as she did. Three years seems impossibly long for her."

Time was a funny thing, wasn't it? Rose hadn't seen her mother in over twenty years. Violet had been in this dimension for a decade, but in her mother's time it had only been three years on Earth and another year travelling. Technically, Jackie hadn't seen Rose in four years, and now she had an eight-year-old grandson to show for it. She wondered if she should draw her mother a map, or just leave it. "I'm sure it was a second and an eternity, all in the same breath. What doesn't kill her makes her stronger right?"

"Or just hurts a whole lot." There wasn't anything mischievous about the way Jackie said it. Almost… as if Violet had been, in point of fact, hurt in her time in this universe.

And once again, Rose was sure that the Doctor knew the details of this, and wasn't telling her. It was why there was this sudden tension between him and Violet. But she wouldn't press her mother for details just yet—she had plenty of time to pry the answers out. "She'll be fine. I think he's good for her." Sighing, she pointed at the table. "Rom, take the cup off of your head." It wasn't a hat. It hadn't been a hat the last thirty times he'd done it and it wouldn't be a hat the next thirty times he did it, so why did he put it on his head? Just don't wear china. What was so tough about that?

XYZ

When Jack appeared in the doorway of the near-empty efficiency, Gwen took that as a sign that they were taking too long. And they were. When they'd first come into the room to gather Violet's things, the young woman had looked around at the place as if she was seeing it for the first time. The shock in her eyes had been a little startling to Gwen. Like Violet couldn't imagine herself having lived there.

Then they'd actually found her things. It was little more than an oversized canvas backpack filled with clothing odds and ends and survival gear, and a small yellowed shoe box full of the few personal effects of her husband's that she'd managed to keep with her. It seemed a very sorry testament to Gwen.

What had taken so long was that Violet had dumped the pack's contents onto the bed and had begun going through them, wondering just what her life had become. Gwen knew why Jack had sent her when she saw the things in the bag; it was the same reason he'd set her on figuring out where Violet had been for the past few years before turning up again on their doorstep. Gwen's old job came in handy now and again.

The clothes were a mish-mash of styles and makes, not at all the things that Gwen had seen the young woman wear when she had any sort of choice. It was all very utilitarian; something for every sort of weather, often shapeless and looking as if it had once belonged to someone else. It may have had colour in it, but it had all been weathered down to a faded grey.

And that was where Jack had found them. Silently going through the sack, Gwen carefully looking over the clothes before refolding them into a pile on the canvas cot that had obviously been serving as a bed for who knew how long.

He looked like he wanted to say something about them taking too long, but he stopped, leaning against the door frame. "How's it going?"

Violet looked up and didn't say anything for a moment. Her blue eyes matched Jack's for a moment, before she could find her voice. She'd seemed a bit slow in reacting to things lately. Gwen wondered if it was some sort of shock that wasn't quite wearing off. "Can't believe these're my things."

But there was some note of belief in her voice, Gwen thought as she stacked one knit glove on the other and added them to the pile of clothes. She might not like what her life had become, but it sounded like the other woman accepted it as having been so, despite not being able to remember it. Whatever she'd been up to, it had been rough living.

Gwen studied Violet's roots for a moment. It'd probably been a couple of months since her last dye job. It was kind of obvious that there had been a few. There were a few different layers of blonde in the length of it, which looked like it had been hastily cut by the owner's own hand. Whatever she'd been up to, the six to eight months had been spent running, probably from the people who had taken her memories. Possibly to avoid this very scenario.

Jack looked around at the barren room and the things folded on the bed. "Figure anything out yet?"

Laughing bitterly, Violet shoved some barebones climbing equipment back into the bottom of the canvas bag. "Other than how I'm an idiot?"

Gwen held up a torn undershirt that looked like it had been slashed with a knife. "Whatever you offered them, you didn't deliver in the end. You were running…whatever happened. You can live with that, at least." It was only something Gwen had surmised from Gregory Sheel Patel still being among the deceased, or so their records told them.

For a moment, Violet stared at the contents of the bed, her eyes seeming to glaze over. "Something's still not right, though. I can feel it. I did something." She shook her head. "All I did was mess things up worse. He's still dead, and I've done whatever I've done. The Time Agency probably knows more about Time Lords than they need to. Could this be any worse?"

Crossing the few feet to the bed, Jack squeezed her shoulder. "You couldn't have given them whatever you'd originally offered."

She stared at his hand, seeming to want to pull away from it, but also partially craving the comfort. "Or I could have given it to them, then still gotten screwed over. Didn't get what I wanted, got my memory wiped, and everything's still for shit."

Sliding his hand off of her shoulder, Jack took a step back. "The part I don't get is… why even deal with them? Why not just wait for the Doctor to give you back your ship?"

A question more than worth asking, Gwen thought. It seemed like a hell of a lot less risk and effort to just wait and do it herself.

The hollow laugh the young woman gave seemed to sit dead in Gwen's ears. She was awful young to be so bitter. "Do you think he'd give me back my ship? Knowing what I was going to do? He knew. It was why he took FRED with him. And… I didn't have the patience to wait him out. It had been months. He'd gone and missed his mark… AGAIN. A blind midget could land that TARDIS more accurately."

She sniffed and wiped something from her eye, then turned around suddenly, something terrible twisting on her lips. "I missed him, ok? I just missed him and I wanted him back. And I only had one chance—when the Doctor wasn't in this dimension to stop me. So I took it! I took it, and…" her voice faltered. "I'm sorry I did it. NO, I'm not sorry I did it. I'm sorry how it turned out."

Jack was unreadable. That was probably the best that he could manage. If he'd have let anything slip, they'd probably both have seen just how angry he was with her. But then, Gwen knew that when it came down to it, Jack was a man capable of making tough decisions. He wouldn't have let her do it either.

When she thought about it, though…she could at least sympathise with the young woman. Who wouldn't try to change something like that, if they had the power to? And it wasn't like she'd never made her own mistakes in that category. That sort of power probably took more wisdom to use correctly than Gwen possessed. She wasn't sure how a twenty-something was supposed to handle it, especially one that was simply expected to be a guardian of Time by virtue of education and heritage. A young adult was still just that—young enough to make bad decisions and be blinded by love.

In it's own sad way… she supposed it was a bit romantic. Tearing apart time and space, consequences be damned… But was there really room for romance when one had the ability to cause so much destruction, simply by thinking of one's own personal interests? In that light, it sounded rather selfish. Gwen was sure that Violet hadn't considered it that way, when she'd been hurting and lonely.

The young woman was staring out the curtainless window. "I don't want to be like him. I don't want to end up alone, in a room full of people." Not really even looking, she began shoving things into the bag. "I just miss… look. I don't care what you think." But her nose was running, and she looked back at Jack, to gauge his reaction. She did care, deep down. Probably more than she could admit. "Stupid humans with your stupid human life spans. I hate all of you. I hate you, and I hate Greg and I hate mum. I hate you all." Wiping her nose with the back of her hand, she put all of her weight into squishing the replaced clothes in the backpack. "It's not fair. I should have been dead twice over by now. It'd have been better that way."

Seeing that Jack wasn't going to do it, Gwen quietly walked around the bed and took the backpack from Violet. Handing it to Jack, she hugged the girl, who instantly squeezed her back, as if she might never let go. No matter how stupid she'd been, the girl was grieving and Jack, despite being hero and demi-god to a four and eight year old, had no clue how to just be a friend. It was probably yet another reason he kept Gwen around… to make up for those deficiencies.

So despite Jack's desire to get a move on, they stood there in that tiny room, Jack looking as uncomfortable as anything and Gwen trying to give the pathetic young woman a shoulder to cry upon, quite literally. These things were never simple, nor did she expect them to be. Still, it would be nice, if only once, for things not to be complicated by the rules of space-time in addition to those of the heart. It might make it a bit less wrenching.

Jack sighed, finally, seeming to relent a little. "Vi, I am sorry." And it sounded like he did actually mean it, too. "We'll get all of this sorted out. In the mean time, I think you need to get cleaned up. And unless you've suddenly become a fan of cosmic blue neo-plastic jackets, you probably need to get yourself together and make yourself presentable. 'Cos trust me. All of this will definitely be here a little bit later.

Gwen nodded, wiping tears of grief from the younger woman's face. "Yeah. We'll get you some clothes. Just like that last time. The great office expenditures budget Torchwood has can take care of it." She shot Jack a quick glance that said he'd just better not contradict her. "Maybe see what we can do about your burnt hair. It is a bit on the crispy side, now isn't it, lovely?"

Blinking a few times, Violet gave a tiny smile. "Yeah. It's in sorry shape. It's a shame, too. It used to be such nice hair."

Brushing the young woman's hair over her shoulder Gwen tried to think back upon its former shade. It had been so dark and silky, it was almost difficult to believe this was the same person. She reminded Gwen more of the girl with the freckles and frazzled hair that she'd met, that first time around. "Lets get you put back together." Fixing her hair and getting her more comfortable clothes wouldn't fix the broken heart or the addled mind, but it was a start toward getting her back on her feet.

Jack had been right about that, at least. It was time for her to start working on getting herself together to move on. Otherwise she'd spend all of her time stuck in the past, never moving on through the normal stages of grief. Yes they had to fix this. But Violet also needed to take that first step.

Now Gwen just had to convince Violet of that.

XYZ

A couple of hours into their catch-up session, Rose heard the TARDIS reappearing up stairs. Branden had passed out for his afternoon nap, half draped over the arm of the sofa, half drooping onto the floor. Even Arten seemed content for the moment, lying on a blanket on the floor, trying to pluck the dummy he was sucking on out of his own mouth and failing miserably, but to comedic effect. Rom was drawing vigorously on the pad of paper he'd been given, and really had nothing to say about the Doctor's return, other than to mention how the Doctor STILL wasn't as cool as Jack, who was Batman.

Jackie looked up from the magazine she was leafing through as they sat in the lounge, watching the boys, and asked Rose just what sort of insane world they lived in, where the boys would go about insisting someone was a superhero with such absolute certainty.

Rose sighed and tried not to roll her eyes. "The same one where Branden insists for weeks on end that he's Spider-Man, and demands that we call him that. They just have very active imaginations, mum. That's all." She hoped. Violet was always very 'into' her play time, but the boys seemed to take it to a whole new level.

A short distance away, trainer-clad feet pounded against the marble steps. A second or two after that stopped, the whole room froze as the Doctor appeared in the doorway, out of breath. "Well?" Rose asked. "Just what do you have to say for yourself?"

Leaning into the room while still hanging onto the doorway, the Doctor swallowed. "Well? A well is a deep subject." He fidgeted for a moment, possibly wondering if they'd buy that as an answer. "Anyway….Violet's gone and done something stupid. Feel like coming with, on a small side trip to make sure the universe is still mostly standing?"

Looking a bit putout at the mere suggestion of it, Rose looked over to her mother for fast advice.

Jackie just shrugged. "Well, get going. The sooner you leave, the sooner you'll come back. Of course, who knows, with that bloody donor of yours driving. The baby might be in school by then."

Rose gasped, turning a bit red as she turned away from the Doctor in embarrassment. "Mum!"

Closing her magazine, Jackie looked quite satisfied with the universe, as if she knew better than every single last one of them. "What? You were thinking it too!"

But before Rose could think of anything clever to say in response to that, the Doctor had dragged her towards the second floor. "Be back in two ticks," he assured. "Universes to save, irresponsible Time Lords to wrangle. You know… the usual."

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

They entered the Vortex without a word. The Doctor was even able to avoid her glares as they made the jittery and unstable passage through the Void and back into their own universe. But before he could begin searching for the timespace coordinates of the disturbance, the Jackie-like look of disapproval he was getting from Rose bored into his back like lightening. "If you're going to be like that, you shouldn't have come." He reached for the lever to drop them out of the Vortex.

Sliding up beside him, she put her hand on the console, putting herself between him and real space. "No. You tell me what's going on."

He tried to reach for the metal rod that had been ingloriously soldered to the console a while back when repairs got trickier to find parts for. Rose's glare stopped him though. "Violet's gone and done something stupid. I'm sure of it. It may actually be fixable though. It's a…Time Lord-y thing. I just know that stuff. I'm not avoiding Jackie. Honest." Sort of.

Sighing, Rose continued to glare at him. "No. What's going on with you and Violet? I am pretty damned sure that you expected her to do something stupid; you've been on edge like you've been waiting for it for weeks. And now that it's happened you seem more disappointed than surprised. You two weren't exactly talking and you left her there, without her ship…I want to know what I'm walking into when we go back there."

Guiltily, the Doctor looked away from her. "She thinks she can change something that's written in stone. I told her she shouldn't even try, that it was dangerous to the universe. She hasn't listened to a word I've said since she was fifteen years old."

Rose folded her arms over her chest, still more annoyed with the Doctor than with anything Violet had potentially done. "She's Violet, of course she's not going to listen. But you haven't answered my question. What's going on between you?" She waited for an answer, but he still didn't respond. "She's my daughter. So tell me."

Licking his lips, the Doctor stepped away from the console. He backed up against the railing, leaning against it. "She's already accidentally crossed her own time line. That stuff never used to be a big deal. Ok, it was a big deal. The Time Lord council could do horrible things like drag you in to explain yourself or make you president over it. But we were trained for those scenarios. Blocking your own mind psychically so your future or past self couldn't hear your thoughts, and making yourself forget the whole incident. But it wasn't just the training. There were more Time Lords to look after the timelines and keep errant strands from getting too far off course. It wasn't just that they'd send someone to fix it, it was that their mere existence kept things in check. It's why things went so very badly with the reapers and everything with your father."

He took a deep breath, massaging his temple with his knuckles. "And there're more Time Lords, so things aren't as big of a mess as if it was just me, but things got off course when she crossed her own time line and saw her own future, but then, to make matters worse, against better judgment, she's tried to change fate."

"Fate?" Rose was looking at him like he was crazy. "Nothing's set in stone, your world could be rewritten like that… any of this sounding familiar?"

Digging his knuckle into his eye, the Doctor rubbed. "She's already seen the outcome. She can't do anything to affect it. Otherwise…badness. All kinds of badness. That's what we're walking back into."

Why was Rose looking at him like that? Like he should know the question she was dying to ask?

Throwing his hand up in the air, he let out a forceful breath. "Look, Greg is supposed to die. She's trying to change that, or she did change that. And something's going to hell as a consequence."

Rose turned away from him. "I see," she answered tersely.

Great. Now he was in trouble. All he wanted was for the universe to not collapse in on itself. Apparently that was just too much to ask for.

XYZ

They were getting their nails done. Violet wasn't sure why, but they were. She'd mentioned that it was always what she and her grandmother had done, instead of baking chocolate chips whenever they were down in the dumps. Violet hoped that Gwen Cooper really didn't think that getting French tips could possibly fix just how badly she'd botched things.

But there was something about the fumes from the filler and the noise of the fan in conjunction with the rhythm of the manicurist's strokes that was oddly calming. Maybe this was why her grandmother had done this. It wasn't so bad.

They'd had to hack a full four inches off of her hair to get all the split ends and fried bits. She'd figured whatever she'd been hiding from was done and over-with, so there was no sense in keeping the blonde. It looked wretched on her anyway. It felt good to have her hair back, at least, even if it would take forever for it to grow out again.

Their first stop had been some moderately acceptable clothing followed by a quick shower. There seemed to be a level of grime on her that she couldn't quite comprehend. Maybe it wasn't on her skin, though…

"We could get something to eat after this."

It took a few moments for Violet to process that someone was talking to her. Turning to Gwen she blinked a few times. "I guess. If you're hungry."

With her free, unpainted hand, Gwen tucked her swooping dark locks behind her ear. "A bit. It's been a long day. What about you?"

Violet shrugged. "Not really." Looking away, she sighed. "I wish I was. It'd be something…normal. Human." She vacillated between hating humanity and wishing she could be more like them. Mostly because she just wanted to belong somewhere. Was that too much to ask for? A home? Her home was gone, her homeland was gone…all she had left was this stupid Earth, really. And they didn't like her here. "Greg would be on me about it. Every six hours, whether I'm hungry or not. Owen's right. He was a mother hen." She looked up at the ceiling tiles, wondering why everything felt so distant and far away. "It feels like a long time ago. I can't remember anything after waiting…but it feels so long ago."

She thought back to how things had been, wondering why it had ended the way it had. "I think we were happy, you know. I don't know. I'm not a good judge of those things. But I thought we were happy. His mum even seemed to like me. It was good. It was like having a mum, even if mine was far away. Especially when she found out we were trying to get pregnant. She already had six grand children but apparently that wasn't enough. What the hell am I talking about? My mother's addicted to burping and nappy changes. Some people just live for that stuff. But me, I'd have been happy with one, I think. I don't think I could even handle one, so one would have been a big number for me."

Blinking a few times, she managed to hold back a sudden dampness in the eyes. "His dad didn't like me. Thought education was the most important thing. So I didn't want to stay there, thought we'd get a little place, if the Doctor was not going to come back any time soon. But his mum wanted us to stay there. So we did. And it was fun, you know? His sisters and their kids always in and out. And his brothers were ok. We found things to stick our noses into."

"But that's all good," Gwen encouraged. "Its good to have memories like those."

Violet glanced at her incredulously. "Are you a councilor or something? I know it's good. It was good, all of it. It was like… having a real family. Those boys…my brothers… they don't know how good they have it. I don't know how my mother does it, with the Doctor, day in and day out. He's not a bad sort, mostly. He was fun to travel with. Great to talk to. But he wasn't…all there all the time. The way family is. Or is supposed to be."

The manicurist took her other hand. She stared absently into the amber of the work light for a few moments, wondering why she couldn't go back to the way things were, back when she'd thought she'd had a family and had been happy. "It was like… I still can't remember it all now. It was like a dream, or like it was happening to someone else. He said he was going with his brother to look at a car. Said we needed a better way to get around, if I was going to be poking my head in things Torchwood should have been handling. God… I was asleep. It was so early. I'd been up late the night before, talking to his mother. I said I didn't care what he got, we could get something new—I still had the magic credit card. But he had this dumb idea about living within our means. Whatever that meant."

Violet shook her head, trying to clear away the painful memory. "I just wanted to go back to sleep. I was tired…It's amazing really. When I'm acting human how easy it is to fake a human routine. Stay up for a week straight, and you can get eight hours' consecutive sleep. I needed another two, it was seven in the morning…God. He was talking, and I just wanted him to shut up so I could go back to sleep. I figured he'd get a shit-box and it'd give me something to tinker with, and it'd keep me occupied for a little bit. I was running out of books to read."

Gwen gave her a sympathetic smile, seeming to ask with round eyes for her to continue. Violet watched the woman working on her other hand, trying to make her nails look just a little less ratty and dirty. A little bit less like she'd been through something hellish she couldn't even recall these last few years. "He was following his brother back in the new-ish car. Green Gremlin, older than dirt." Closing her eyes, she tried to hold back the images. "They woke me up when the police came. It was a bad car. Who buys a car that old? I—I should have gone with him. I should have gone with him. I could have told him not to buy it or…or something. I could have done something. I knew it was coming…and I let him out of my sight." She had dreams, every time she fell asleep, of being in the car with him. Grabbing the wheel and effecting some sort of escape. Some sort of ending that wasn't the ending they'd had for themselves. One that hadn't ended in a closed-casket funeral and his mother's howling cries.

"You couldn't 'watch' him forever. No one can do that."

She turned to the other woman, staring at her intensely. "That's what faking a human routine got me. Trying to be 'normal' for his family so they'd like me. I shouldn't have tried." Violet knew deep down that Greg would have told her otherwise. But it didn't reduce her feelings of culpability. "And what'd it get me with his mum? All my stuff tossed out. She just…went mad. Lost it. Even his sisters couldn't calm her down. So I just took what I could carry and left the rest in the mud."

There was something comforting about the acetone and other vapors. It was right up there with the smell of cinnamon and tea for things that made the world look like a more cheerful face. Or maybe she was getting heady from the odor.

Gwen Cooper, who wasn't a bad sort, really, took a moment to process everything. Shifting in the wood-backed chair, she crossed one leg over the other, trying not to move too much as her own nails were worked on. "But cooler heads prevailed eventually, right?"

Violet shrugged. "Never tried to talk to them again. Ran into his oldest sister once…she seemed genuinely sorry, said her mum was still a basket case, but they didn't blame me. She gave me her number, said she'd kept the rest of my things. Civil lady, nice." She shook her head at the memory. "I never called her. I'd left for Mexico a little bit after. Wonder what she thinks of me."

The other woman let that hang in the air between them again. She really was good at reading others. Jack's choice in people certainly couldn't be faulted. "That you're someone that was hurting just as badly as her mother was hurting. You may want to try looking her up now. Even if only for a sense of closure."

Laughing bitterly, Violet wondered if the other woman wasn't a bit naive after all. "I have bigger fish to fry. I need to figure out what the hell I did to the time stream before I worry about what a handful of humans think about me." How desperately she missed her childhood, when she was one of them—or at least thought she was. Back when she was special because she was her mother's best friend and her grandmother's little pal. Back when her grandfather would hold her up to show her the inner workings of his car as he repaired it because she was his 'clever little monkey,' and not for any other reason. She'd belonged to a handful of people, and it had been enough. She wanted to feel that safe again.

"You still didn't answer the question of lunch?"

It was nice of Gwen Cooper to change the subject when it got too desperately maudlin. "I don't think I'm going to have anything. But if you need food, lets get you some." They were humans; they needed such ordinary things so very, very often. They'd started up whole cultural bonding rituals over nighttime and mealtime and everything else in between. She might not be good at pretending any more, but at least she could admire the intention behind it all. "Maybe a cup of tea or something. Chinese?"

Gwen smiled. "That'd be nice."

XYZ 

Rose rolled her eyes. Again. "I just think you may want to try TALKING to her first, before you start digging around time streams to see what she's done."

The Doctor looked up from one of the monitors, and his current calculations. "What's there to talk about? I told her not to, and she did it anyway. Now I need to fix this before it gets too out of hand. Of course I need to figure out what THIS is, but the time streams aren't anything like we left them. How much damage could she do to space and time, without a TARDIS, in six hours? She's set new levels of overachievement. At least I didn't wreck past and future points when I was stranded on Earth. I mean… look at these numbers…"

She let him go on for a few more moments in the hopes that he'd wear himself out. In that sense, it was very much like arguing with a toddler. He fussed with controls, then looked at her, trying to see if she had bought his explanation. "Look, I don't care. It's a time machine. We'll get to it eventually. But I want to see my daughter NOW. If Greg is dead, she needs her mother. Instead of--" she stopped, drawing in a deep, ragged breath.

"Instead of what?" His eyebrow arched dramatically. "Instead of me giving her a hard time about responsibilities and time lines and living up to what's expected of her as a guardian of the universe? She knew better. I taught her better. I told her not to do it. And what did she do?"

Crossing her arms over her chest, Rose slid between him and the monitor. "Fine. You drop me off with her, then you can go fix the mess she's made. Like we've never made any of our own or something. You're a fine one, you know that? But I want to see my daughter."

He grimaced then reached around her, changing their coordinates. "And to think I thought you wanted to spend time with ME. You just wanted to get away from the three stooges."

A slightly evil grin spread across Rose's lips. "My mother used to laugh at me when Violet cried as a baby, saying it was the mother's curse. Let her have a few hours of fun with those little imps, and we'll call it even for the torture she put me through. But you're not getting out of this. I'll come with you if you want to stick around and wait for me, I've already done it to her enough in her life…. but I'm not going to abandon my child if I can help it."

Stepping back, she leaned against the railing as he redirected the ship. With his face held so tensely, he looked to be under considerable strain in the green glow of the console. Whatever it was, it would certainly be easier to solve with Violet's help. She could tell them exactly what she'd been up to. He was just avoiding her.

Could they both be any more pigheaded? She'd seen how they'd been behaving before they'd left the young lovebirds in Cardiff during the appropriate time period. Neither was really in any position to claim the moral high ground over the other, as far as she was concerned. "So where is she?"

The Doctor frowned. "She's been out of the time stream. I'm having trouble tracking---wait here. Same geographical location, different time zone. It figures, she'd go crawling back to Jack."

TBC…


	6. Chapter 6

Rom licked sugar off of his thumb. His ankles twisted around the wooden chair parked at the kitchen table. Jackie had told Violet a million times not to do that to the chairs, but it wasn't important any more. They were just chairs. The scuffing gave them character. Branden was still sleeping and the baby had quieted down so she was just enjoying the time.

The boy put another sugar coated sweet into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "So what's a president do, anyways? They get to order people around an' stuffs?"

Taking a sip from her mug, Jackie smiled. "Sometimes."

"I wanna be a president of something some day," the boy said with awe. "He's gonna come home? And we'll get to see him an' stuff? Mum said he's awesome."

Rose was right, they were adorable, in their own Doctor-ish sort of way. She couldn't believe she'd just thought that in relation to him, but they were perfectly cute, despite genetics. "He's out of the country for a few days. But he'll be back for Sunday, when your sister was supposed to visit." It was still odd to think that her family had suddenly gotten so big. Well, she'd only had a few hours to adjust to the idea. Rose just swans in, says hello, then gets dragged off by the Doctor.

It was almost like old times, all those lifetimes ago. There'd been life with Pete, struggling to make ends meet, waiting for their big break. Then there'd been life with Rose, still trying to make ends meet, and trying to raise a head-strong daughter all by herself. Then her daughter had grown, but had still needed her. They'd been more like roommates and friends at one point—Rose working full time, Jackie working on the side. They'd seemed to have gotten over their mother-daughter fighting and had settled into something easy.

Then the Doctor had blown up her job and dragged Rose off for a year. That year, wondering what had happened to her only child…it had seemed like its own lifetime. Sometimes, Jackie felt as if she'd lived just as many lifetimes as the Doctor, because then there'd been that year with her daughter coming and going with the leather-clad northern Doctor, then that terrible Christmas where he'd changed, but Rose had gone off with him just the same, just as soon as the dust died down.

The ghosts came, then her world had changed yet again—she'd gotten Pete back, in a way. She'd gotten her daughter back, in a way. Not to mention a granddaughter and a life she'd never expected. Life with Violet had been…a whole new chapter. A little bundle of curiosity and energy that was as endearing as she was frustrating. Then there was life without Violet, and it had taken years to get back to something normal. This was followed by having her granddaughter back, but her daughter gone…becoming the wife of the president and coping (or not, mostly) with all the things asked of her.

Now…well, now she had three little people she was getting to know. And they were…interesting. She'd give them that. "Are you sure you want to be in charge of people? It's a lot of work."

Rom shrugged. "I just wanna tell people what to do. ALL the time."

Jackie arched an eyebrow. At least he was honest. "Just like your mum does? Go to bed, brush your teeth?"

The boy rolled his eyes, like that was preposterous. "Like Captain Jack does. 'You listen to me, you slime suckin' alien…' pow pow pow and he beats 'em up if they don't listen cos he's Captain Jack and he's awesome. Maybe Captain Jack can be president of something. That'd be awesome." He sighed with contentment before popping more sugary chunks into his mouth. "Some day, I'm gonna be Captain Jack."

Guessing what sort of work would put 'Captain Jack' in the same circles as her daughter and the Doctor ran in, Jackie wasn't sure if it was a relief that the boy wanted to follow in someone else's' footsteps besides the Doctor, or if she should be terrified. She'd known him all of six hours, and she already felt like she knew everything about him in some ways. "Why don't you just be like yourself when you grow up?"

Frowning again, the boy's round, full cheek twitched with his seriousness. "Well, that's no good. I'm totally not awesome. And I'm not cool like Captain Jack. And I don't have a dinosaur."

From the kitchen doorway, Branden yawned and rubbed his eye, tugging his blanket behind him. "I think the universe just hiccupped." The boy rubbed his nose. "Not this one. The other one. This one burped."

Jackie slid around in her chair then held an arm out to the four year old, who waddled over to her embrace without question. Family just knew these things. "It burped?"

He nodded, still blinking away sleep with his long golden lashes. "Everything's all screwy. Vi totally broked it. A lot."

Rom frowned at his brother. "Go back to sleep."

"Universe is all dumb and stuff. Its that way when you close your eyes an' look around."

Jackie had no idea what that meant, but Rom seemed to. He closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath and holding it. As he let it out slowly, some purpleish juice squirted out of the corner of his mouth and ran down his jaw. "Oh. Poop. Yeah. An' I thought mum and the Doctor were runnin' away to make more little brothers. She's the worst sister ever."

XYZ

As they walked back in the dark toward the Hub, Gwen thought her charge was looking increasingly more tired. Allegedly she didn't require as much sleep as humans, but Gwen had noticed quite a few human traits kicking in within the last few hours.

Once Violet had started drinking the tea, it had been only another step to get her to try some of the food, which she then ended up eating most of. Now she looked like she was mostly in need of a good nap.

"There was this one planet…where everything was made out of food. I know what you're thinking. And it was exactly like that…" hands in her pockets, her pace slowed and she sighed. "I miss travelling. I miss travelling with him. It was ok not travelling with him… it was…"

She stopped and Gwen took a few steps forward before she realised her charge was not with her. "I offered them access to other dimensions. They didn't need time travel, they had that. Other dimensions…they'd have wanted something like that. But only a time Lord can do it. I can't just…unlock the door for them and let them through."

This was further than they'd been this afternoon, that was for certain. She'd had a feeling at the time that Violet had just needed to step away and step back and do something else to clear her head. A bit of shopping and the nails had been a good step toward that, and toward getting the girl started back on her life again.

"What do you suppose happened after that?"

Violet shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't deliver in the end, that's why I was running. But why wipe my memory? There's got to be a really high chance that I'll break through the memory wipe. They had to have known what I was."

Biting her cheek, Gwen crossed her arms as she thought it over. "Or you knew something that they wanted you to forget." That was her going theory with Jack, and Jack's now-infamous missing two years.

A car passed, and Violet watched it turn the corner, as if it held some sort of answer. "Maybe. But… how long? What was it? And what did I change? Something's changed in the time line, I can feel it. But I have no idea what it was. Sometimes I get flashes…"

She stopped and Gwen wasn't sure what to do. She wanted to say something comforting, because she was sure the young woman was lost, but nothing was coming to mind. Finally Gwen slid her arm around the young alien's shoulders. "Lets get back to the hub, and see what Jack has to say about all this. It's getting a little cold."

Taking a few steps forward, Violet stopped in her tracks again. "I'm not going back there. I need some other place to… be. Some place else to go."

Gwen tried to drag the other woman in the direction of the hub again. "But Jack'll be able to help."

She shook her head quickly, not budging. "I'm not going back there. He knows what I've done."

Somehow Gwen managed not to sigh, not sure what that had to do with anything at all at this point—what was done was done. "Jack?"

"The Doctor."

XYZ

Jack had something that Owen had termed an 'eruption' on his hands. Rose was demanding to see her daughter, the Doctor looked like he might kill the girl just as soon as look at her, and… there Jack was, standing in the middle of it all in the hub, wondering just when the hell the place had gone domestic.

When Rose spun on the Doctor, pointing a finger in his face, he knew they were doomed slightly. "And why couldn't you just tell me what was going on from the beginning?"

Before she could draw breath to start really laying into the Time Lord, Jack stepped between them and held up his hands. "Just take a moment. Both of you." And do what, Jack wasn't sure. "The kid's been through hell. Doctor, I want to strangle her just as bad as you do, but we can't, not just yet, till we figure out what's going on. Rose—I know you want to see her. They're coming back here. Gwen just thought she'd feel a little better if she was more comfortable. We're going to sort this out." Boy, he'd managed that with confidence he hadn't felt. He was such a mature grownup about this whole thing, really.

Actually it was just that he and Owen had spent the last two hours discussing battle tactics. He'd come to the conclusion that since he was the girl's senior by well over a hundred years, it fell upon him to be the 'mature' and possibly 'sensible' party.

"You're taking her side," the Doctor announced, despite what Jack had just said.

Rose looked at him coolly. "And you're not."

"I should? I told her what would happen…"

Looking around, Jack noticed how not only had Owen (the rat) scurried away when the TARDIS had appeared, Tosh and Ianto had also made themselves scarce. He'd like to thank his team for their love and support in this difficult time.

Well, he couldn't blame them. HE wouldn't even be there if he hadn't stepped right in it with Violet earlier in the afternoon. "Ok, kids…"

Two heads snapped toward him, a bit insulted with Jack's implication.

Hands on his hips, he shifted slightly. "God. I'd like to point out how not-good it is that I'M the level-headed one." This really did seem to get their attention though. "Look…we need to sort this out. Then we can sort HER out, right?" It seemed like a plan.

The Doctor should have been up on this stuff. There was a certain order to the universe—with Torchwood, Jack's word was law. Where the Doctor was concerned, plans were his department, but he didn't seem to have his head together. He never seemed to have gotten over the initial urge to wrap his hands around Violet's throat and throttle.

Something else was going on.

God…Jack hated being the grownup sometimes. "Ok, how's this. Doc, you an' me can track down where the time stream's gone wrong. Rose…why don't you sort out Violet? Then everybody's happy. Well, not happy, but…serviceable." He looked at the Doctor, who was avoiding meeting his eyes. "Then YOU don't have to deal with Violet." Next he turned to Rose, who looked like she'd strangle the Doctor instead of Violet, if given half a chance. "Ok?" He felt like he was dealing with two little kids, which worried him. There was something they were all missing, he was sure of it—something thick and turbid and hanging in the air.

Behind and above him, feet clomped on one of the metal footbridges surrounding the second level of the Hub. Turning, he was really not pleased to see Gwen standing there alone and out of breath. "Where is she?"

Gwen bit her full lips together for a moment before responding. "We were across the street. She knew he was here, and she took off running. I lost her."

Rolling his eyes, Jack sighed. "Gee wiz, wonder why she wouldn't want to walk into THIS shit storm after she's just destroyed multiple timelines and lost the love of her life."

He SO hated making sense.

XYZ

Jackie—er—gran was talking on the phone to granddad, going on and on about Rom and his brothers. Artin wasn't even interesting or anything, and Gran thought he was the greatest thing since… the wheel or something. Which was just stupid. Artin pooped and cried and took up all of mum's attention, even if he did coo and think Rom was awesome.

But that wasn't the point. Artin was still sleeping and Jackie was talking on the phone, and wasn't paying any attention to them. This was how all the best trouble started.

Grabbing Branden by the sleeve of his shirt, he dragged his brother behind one of the big fluffy sofas. "Ok. So what're we gonna do?"

Branden rubbed his nose with his fist. If only little brothers weren't so…little. And yucky. "About what?"

Rom rolled his eyes. "About the universe getting' dumb." Branden really needed to keep up. "We gotta do something."

When Branden looked up at him with wide, curious eyes, though, Rom remembered why he didn't, like, push his brother into a black hole or something. "Wait for a grownup?"

"Where's the fun in that?"

Branden's bony little shoulders poked upward. "Aint none. Well, 'cept in not getting' grounded."

Digging through his pockets, Rom pulled out a bunch of toys. "Whatdaya got that'll get us outta here? Cos if we don't think of something, we're gonna haveta go to Torchwood." And he couldn't exactly think of a reason why his Gran just HAD to take him to Torchwood. He really could only be so sneaky. Plus the Doctor had been warning them for a week about behaving around Jackie, cos she had eyes in the back of her head, turned into a bat at night, and knew if you'd been naughty or nice.

The younger boy pulled out a plastic dinosaur, a wooden whistle that sounded like a train, and a triangular piece of rye toast. "Will that help?"

"Are you stupid?"

His little brother's tongue came poking out. "Maybe. Are you ugly?"

Reaching a hand up, Rom almost pulled his brother's hair. "You're the second worst little brother ever." Arten being the first cos he didn't have pockets in his little ducky sleeper and so he certainly didn't have anything that could help them. "Got anything else?"

Branden shrugged then held out a clenched hand. "This help?"

Oh they were in SO much trouble. So very very very much trouble that Rom couldn't even think of how grounded they were going to be when this was all over. They'd never leave the ship again until they were like three hundred and fifty cos they were in trouble. They'd better save the whole freakin' dang universe cos, like…they were in trouble. AND what his brother was holding really wasn't helpful. "First of all, why'd you take it?"

The boy shrugged suddenly a bit embarrassed. "Just cos. Its cute an' cuddly. Will it help?"

Checking to make sure Jackie was still paying attention to the phone, Rom grabbed the itty bitty box from his brother. "Tell me something, dummy." He held up the grey casket-like thing. "So what're we gonna do with the baby TARDIS if we can't get in the front door?"

Branden tugged on his shirt. "Dunno. Wasn't thinkin' that far ahead. That's what you're there for."

Swelling with big-brotherly pride, he mashed Branden's straight blonde hair around on his head. "You're still dumb. But I've got a plan."

TBC…


	7. Chapter 7

"Do you want to talk?"

Violet hugged the fence at the edge of the property, watching the front door of a house she hadn't been to in years. "No."

"It's ok. I'll talk then," her mother said soothingly, coming up beside her. "I'm worried about you. So's Jack."

Violet almost laughed. "Jack's worried about the timeline."

Sighing, Rose dared to slide her hand around her daughter's and stared at the light above the porch, wondering what her daughter was looking at. "The Doctor's worried about the timeline. Jack's worried about you."

Sighing, Violet began loosening her grip on the wet wooden planks. "The Doctor's right."

"He's worried about you too."

"Don't be presumptuous."

There was a large stretch of silence and eventually the front porch light of the small suburban home went out, followed by the lamp in the front room. The house went into darkness and still Violet stared at it, as if it held answers. Rose wasn't so sure. It seemed to her to be like the replaying of a memory, looking for some new detail that wouldn't emerge. "The Doctor's worried about you too. In his own way."

Eventually, Violet dared look at her mother. "Do you really believe that?"

Rose smile, still watching the house. Sniffing, she took in the late-evening dew on the lawn and hte smell of wet dog. The family that lived here was mundane in every sense of the word. She knew why her daughter would be jealous. "In his own way. And he may find some way to express that, in some manner that doesn't end with me killing him. But this isn't about him. Vi… why didn't you talk to me?"

The young woman licked her lips, extremely uncomfortable, but not brae enough to pull away. "That used to be our room." She gestured to a large attic window, which sat dark. "I was sleep when…" She blinked, her attempt to ignore her mother crumbling. "I didn't want to worry you."

Laughing incredulously, the mother looked to her daughter, as if to explain something very important. "Funny…that's what the Doctor said to me. You may not realise it, but you're cut from the same cloth. None of you want to worry me… but I'm not made out of eggshells. And I'm smarter than you think."

Opening and closing her mouth once, Violet searched for the words. " I didn't mean… mum… he's gone." It was like she was saying it for the first time. "Oh god. He's gone and it's my fault. I wanted to come back here. I thought it'd keep him safe. It's my fault…"

Sprinklers in the front lawn popped up and began spraying down on the grass and flower beds lining the perfectly normal stone walk. "It's not your fault. If it was his time, it was his time." Careful not to move too quickly, Rose put both of her arms around her child. "There isn't anything you could have done."

Sinking into her mother's embrace, she let herself be guided a step back from the fence. "I keep remembering… it's like I was there. What I wish had happened. I yank the wheel away, but the car still crashes. Maybe… maybe I wish I'd have died too."

Her mother didn't have a response to that. She simply stroked Violet's short, newly conditioned hair, leaning into the embrace.

Closing her eyes, Violet imagined that everything was as it should be. "I can feel the car falling off the road, into a ditch, past the guard rail…there's a creek…" she stiffened, then pulled away from her mother. "I feel ill."

There wasn't anything Rose could do. She just watched her oldest child clutched the fence with one hand, her forehead with the other and wretch into the small patch of grass between the wood and the pavement. She recognised certain signs though, like when Violet's eyes rolled in the back of her head and her daughter paled suddenly, she grabbed her daughter's shoulders. "What is it?"

"That might not have been wishful thinking. It might be something they don't want me to remember." She slumped against her mother for support. "But I remember being in bed. I remember being so tired and sleeping. I remember the doorbell waking me up, the man at the front door…" Fighting off unconsciousness, she looked her mother square in the eye. "Can both things be true at once?"

It was a crazy universe. Rose was at least willing to entertain such a possibility.

XYZ

And the Doctor had skipped straight to that whole ignoring him thing that Jack loved so much. For god sakes. They had some serious shit to deal with and the Doctor was acting… twelve. And that was a generous assessment.

Arms folded, Jack stood on the ramp, watching the Doctor check readings on three separate monitors. "I had this whole speech prepared about how you and Violet need to work this thing out."

The Doctor's jaw was locked. "She's decided that she doesn't need me."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Everybody who's a Time Lord, and an idiot, please raise your hand. She's just lost the love of her life, and you're--"

"Not interested, Jack."

Oh he was being dismissed, was he? Tough shit. He wasn't going anywhere. "Doc, she's your--"

The Doctor's head snapped up from the monitor, looking across the console to where Jack stood. The alien's face was bathed in a sickly green glow from the controls. "She's my what, Jack? You know my people don't have a concept for what you're talking about."

Jack took a few pointed steps down the ramp, further into the lion's den as it were. "Oh come on. You had to have family."

They both stood there for a moment, staring uncomfortably at each other. "We had families, but not in the way you're thinking. Look—Jack, she's an adult. She also knew better. She knew better because I taught her better, and she knew better because I told her not to do it. I new exactly what she was about, and I asked her to not make me have to intervene. But she did it anyway. And she did it in the flashiest most magnificently… STUPID manner possible." With the last the Doctor readjusted one of the monitors, probably unnecessarily, and went back to work.

The other man slid his hands into his pocket. "Wonder where she picked that one up from." Jack let that one settle for a moment. This was going so brilliantly. "What would you have done, if you were her?"

Pausing, the Doctor considered it, but still answered too quickly. "NOT that."

"I might have. Temptation being what it is."

The Doctor was quiet as he contemplated it. "No. You wouldn't have. You know better." As if Jack were a small child who knew it was wrong to take toys that didn't belong to him. Is that what the Doctor thought of them all? Deep down?

Jack closed the remaining distance between himself and the Doctor. "The temptation would have still been there. I'm only human."

It seemed they were both able to talk civilly for now. That was something. "She's not human, Jack."

Ahh. That was was what was eating his friend. It had been right there, when he'd patiently explained that Violet, despite all appearances, wasn't a mere mortal. She was a Time Lord. It was why he was edgy around the word 'human' and the idea of families. "She's had a lot of human influence in her life. And there aren't many humans, if given the opportunity, wouldn't at least contemplate trying to save someone they loved. She's a Time Lord. Yeah, I get that. Your people would not have put up with that shit, and you're the only thing resembling an authority figure left, which means you get the crap job of telling her she's out of line. But…everybody she considers to be family is human. She's spent more time on Earth than any other planet. Her knowledge of your people is… erudite at best. From that perspective… ok, you haveta slap her down. But you also haveta… just… have some sympathy. Yeah?" Cos what was done was done. They couldn't change it. Changing it had gotten them in this mess to begin with.

Instead of responding, the Doctor began setting coordinates, and then set them on their way, all without indicating that he'd found something in the time stream that would indicate a change. "I don't have to do anything, Jack. Other than figure out what she's done and fix it."

The ship shuddered as it dropped out of the vortex a few moments later. "And this would be?"

"Fifteenth century France. It's the first alteration I could find. I actually had to backtrack it from the landmark that wasn't there any more, and… well the detective work portion of this exercise isn't important. This is the first alteration." 

Jack looked at the monitors—there was nothing on the visual. It was too dark. He hoped it was a moonless night and they weren't in a cupboard or something. The Doctor didn't seem too concerned with it, however, and marched right out the front doors of the ship.

They got about two steps out. They hadn't landed near a town of any sort. There may have been a moon, but it was blotted out by the leaves of the tall late-summer trees. It was humid but cool, and the smell of old rotting leaves drifted toward them on the breeze. For a moment, Jack didn't know what they were doing three, until the mediaeval night filled with a foreign popping and the clearing in front of them lit up with yellow-white flash of fifty-second century arms fire.

And being who they were, they only spent a moment looking at each other before they began running toward it.

Before they made it into the open area, something came flying toward them, all legs, long, dark hair and momentum. The moment it hit the ground, it took off again, waving arms toward them. "Move! Move!"

They didn't need much more motivation than that as two more blasts of energy went flying past their heads. In the distance he could hear a familiar dialect grumbling obscenities as two men approached with speed. As soon as she was within reach, Jack grabbed Violet's wrist and dragged her back toward the TARDIS, time lines be damned.

As soon as the door closed behind them, the Doctor glared at Jack as if he'd just doomed them all, but the look on his face fell when he saw the burns along her cheek and blood running down her face and grabbed her jaw, looking her over. Jack couldn't tell if it a look of curiosity, mystification or annoyance that twisted at the Doctor's lips as he inspected her—her long dark hair was dirty and tangled with bits of leaves. The tunic Jack recognised from the things they'd taken out of the efficiency, the cuffs soaked in blood that had run down her arms, beneath the spacious sleeves. There was something sticking out of her leg, possibly an ornamental knife, possibly a rather straight piece of shrapnel.

She gasped when he prodded the charred flesh next to her eyebrow. "Talk about… timing…" she gasped for breath as her body began trembling with the shock of her injuries.

Jack grabbed her shoulders to steady her up but loosened his grip when she twitched from the pain of his touch. "What're we going to do?"

"Now?" The Doctor asked, as if Jack could mean something else. "Treat her. Make sure she doesn't regenerate. Then deal with the time line."

Yeah. They'd really just dug themselves a deeper hole, hadn't they?

XYZ

Both boys looked up innocently from the remains of the refrigerator. They smiled, but they knew they were in trouble. "Hi!" Rom managed eventually.

"Just what in the hell do you two think you're doing?" Jackie's hands came to rest on her hips and she stared down at them, and what they'd done to the back of the refrigerator. "I don't know if that's how the Doctor lets you behave, but you're not going to do that here!"

Rom put the sonic screwdriver in his mouth, chewing on the business end. The Doctor didn't know he had it, so he'd be in trouble as soon as it's loss was discovered. Like… when the Doctor needed it, and reached into his pocket for it, and it wasn't there. Till then… game on. "Well, ya see… we're trying ta save the universe, and we need coolant for the thingy we're buildin' in the cellar…"

Jackie pointed at the corner near the stove. "You. In that one." Then she pointed to the corner next to the doorway leading into the rest of the house. "Branden, the other one." As Rom got up she tried to snatch the sonic screwdriver, but he slid it into his pocket before she could get to it. Jackie just sighed and let him keep it. "If there's something wrong the universe… let the grownups sort it. Honestly, you're just as bad as your sister… makin' a mess and getting into trouble."

They were spared any more lecture when Arten started crying. Ok so maybe Rom had helped a little with that, when he projected thoughts of just how horrible a poopy nappy really was to his little brother. But it was for a good cause. They were in serious, SERIOUS trouble, after all. Violet had broken the universe, for Rassilon's sake!

Oh yeah, and they were bored. And the television was weird here. Oh yeah and the universe was broken. Had they mentioned that the universe was broken? Well, it was. And it was really broken…

Rom tugged on his brother's sleeve. "Cellar," he whispered and they tiptoed off, before anything could go too terribly wrong. Well, wronger than it was. Their totally irresponsible mother had left them in a strange universe with a strange lady and no functional time machine. Really. Rom should call child services. Gwen Cooper always threatened to.

They avoided the house staff and those crazy security cameras (that's why Rom had taken the screwdriver, duh) they made it to the cellar. Closing the basement door quietly, he searched for the light switch, then began to see the flaw in his little plan. Order of operations… the Doctor kept trying to explain to Rom about that. Pillage THEN burn, that sort of thing.

Fortunately Branden was atuned to his brother's deficiencies and snatched the sonic screwdriver from his pocket, then set it to the one that was just a light.

When the torch setting flicked to life, they both gasped as the reflection fell upon a curtain of heavy, folded material, instead of the Spartan staircase they'd traversed earlier in the afternoon. Before he could even look up to see who the unexpected party was, a hand slapped over his mouth. When it pulled away, there was duct tape across Rom's lips. Before he could rip it off or fight back, a sack-like thing covered over him, and another over his brother and they were crushed together then lifted off the top basement step.

The lone figure that had managed to hoist the two boys turned and headed further down into the basement. Rom and Branden both squirmed for their lives. "Shh. Everything's going to be alright."

Well, THAT was certainly a matter of perspective.

They were put down, then taped to something, possibly one of the support beams in the middle of the basement floor. "Stay here and stay quiet while I get your brother."

At the mention of his baby brother, Rom's leg kicked out, catching his assailant in the shin, causing the man to gasp.

But the man didn't stop. It only caused him to limp away, making a dragging sound with every other step. "Just trust me."

Oh like that was going to happen, Rom thought peevishly as he tried to free his hands. What kind of dummy did this bloke take him for?

TBC…


	8. Chapter 8

The window just above the front door opened and a heavy Indian woman in curlers stuck her head out. "I see you there, Violet Tyler!"

Rose saw the way her daughter shirked back from the shrill voice and was rather surprised. Her daughter didn't back down from anyone…even when she probably ought. Oh how may calls she'd gotten from schoolteachers in their few years together. "Uh…hello?" she ventured, trying to sound as calm and friendly as possible.

The woman heaved her breasts menacingly and sighed. "Who the hell're you?"

"Violet's mother. Maybe we can come inside and talk?" Instead of shouting across the lawn.

"Mum," Violet whispered harshly, obviously afraid of the confrontation. When she tried to pull away, Rose held her daughter close. "Mum, please…"

When the window closed, Rose wondered if that'd be the end of it. But a few moments later, the front door opened. With the kind of relentless determination usually reserved for dragging a child to the dentist's office or a hissing cat to the vet, Rose pulled Violet along. It was for her own good. Especially after the story Gwen Cooper had relayed to them back at the Hub, before Jack and the Doctor had stormed off to examine the timeline.

When they were at the front door, Violet locked her jaw, trying to steel herself. She avoided the gaze of the woman at the door, who stood there clutching her sapphire blue silk dressing gown, gesturing for them to hurry up.

"Thank you for letting us in," Rose offered quietly, trying not to alert the rest of the household.

The woman glared at Violet, her thin lips pressed together tightly. "I should have phoned the police. That's what I should have done."

"It's not too late, you know," Violet grumbled peevishly. Anger had somehow loosened her tongue.

Greg's mother didn't seem at all impressed with either of them. "No it's not. What're you doing outside my front gate for, in the middle of the night?"

Violet's cheeks went red and she almost stammered…until the anger came over her again and her eyes hardened. "I was having a bad night. I'm sorry. We won't trouble you any further."

Instead of showing them out, the woman (whose name Rose still didn't have) closed the door behind them. They were both itching for a fight, it looked like. All Rose could do was let them get it out into the open and maybe step in if things got really hairy.

But… something needed to change. Gwen had given her a ride over to suburbia and had briefed her along the way. The other woman had treated it like a situation report, and Rose almost expected a slideshow. But the other woman had been quite thorough with all that Violet had told her within the last day or so.

It kind of killed her—Violet was opening up to someone other than herself. But what could she do? It wasn't as if she'd been present in the girl's life. That was probably what was really bothering her—she hadn't been there for her child. The Doctor acted like raising a child was about reaching a destination; once they were fully grown they should know all that they needed to know to make the right decisions all of the time. It just wasn't so.

Like right now—Violet was practically snarling at the unnamed woman with night cream plastered under her eyes in an attempt to fight off the inevitabilities of getting old. Rose could see a lot of her own mother in that—forever bailing water out of the sinking ship of time, trying to perpetually look just a few years younger.

It was the other woman who broke away from the staring contest first. "Ginny still has some of your things. I told her you weren't coming back for them."

"I don't want my things," Violet managed calmly.

The woman's eyebrow arched. "Then what do you want?" She folded her arms over her chest, waiting for an explanation.

Violet looked away and Rose tried to slide her hand into her daughter's but the girl resisted. "Nothing. I don't know. My—someone said maybe I need to mourn."

The heavy woman snorted, her curlers bouncing as her head came back with the dramatic effort of it all.

Rose wondered what the real story was, here. There was something that lay between them, and it seemed like it wasn't even the same 'something' for either woman. "What?"

The woman glared at her critically, as if she should know. "I mourn every day. You tell me it's been three years, and you've just thought that it'd be a good idea now? But I suppose it isn't high on the list for--"

"For what?" Violet asked sharply, her blue eyes narrowing.

Head held high, the woman looked down her prominent nose at Violet. "Well, you know."

Rose didn't know, and she suspected Violet didn't. "No, I don't. I don't know why… look… he wasn't just your son. He was my… my husband."

They were so utterly cut from the same cloth, weren't they? There were a thousand things the Doctor couldn't admit to, and Violet was barely any better. Husband was almost a curse word, the way she said it… but she still wore her wedding ring on a chain around her neck.

Slippers scraping against the tile floor of the small foyer, the woman shifted. "You were married for what? Six months? You've lived longer without him than with him. He was my son since before he was born."

Rose opened her mouth to intervene, but it was too late. Violet had slapped the woman across the face. She managed to grab her daughter's wrist before Violet could pull back to slap again, but that was about it. "Violet—stop it—we're adults…"

Eyes watering, Violet looked at the woman as though she could kill her. "Ten years! Ten years and then some! I thought—I thought I was keeping him safe by bringing him back here! And you'll never know, and you'll never understand, because—because you're human! I hate you all!"

Pulling her daughter back toward the door, Rose looked at Greg's mother sympathetically. "Please. Excuse her, she's been having--"

"She killed my son," the woman responded icily, just as the light in the upstairs hall flicked on. "She killed my son, and she has the nerve to come back here…"

Barely getting both arms around her daughter before Violet lunged for the woman, Rose managed to hold her back. "By letting him go alone?"

A fat finger with a dark-red nail shot up toward Rose's face. "She went with him! I saw her leave! And then when the police came, she was in bed, like nothing had happened! She killed him, and she got away with it!"

Violet stopped struggling against her mother. Her arms fell down to her sides and she stared at the woman, completely lost. "I—I… mum." Her trembling hand found Rose's and clutched onto it for dear life. "Mum…they're both true… oh god…"

Before her child could break down any further, Rose wrenched open the front door just as a robed male figure began slowly descending the steps at the other end of the foyer. She dragged Violet through the threshold. "We'll talk about this further. She isn't in any condition…" Without continuation of that statement, she simply dragged Violet down the walk and away from anything else going wrong.

She had no idea what Violet had gotten herself involved in. But it was… massive. And dangerous.

XYZ

As soon as the sack was taken off of each of the boys, Branden sniffled, looking around the dark interior of a small shuttle type ship, green and purple controls glowing along the walls. "I don't want to be kidnapped any more."

Rom instinctively pulled his brother behind him so that he was between the little boy and the man in the pilot's chair. The chair was turned from the console to face them, the man wearing a long leathery coat with an enormous hood that hid his face. Locks of straight black hair slithered around his muscled, wiry neck and came down the front, past the clasp of the coat. He looked kind of like one of those characters in the fantasy movies Rom wasn't allowed to watch due to 'excessive violence.' Oh yeah, and dragons gave Rom nightmares.

The boy stood up straight and tired to be…firm. "You better just take us back! Cos, like, my granddad's the president of something, and my mum is mean, and…and…"

A gloved hand came to their captor's lips. "Shh. You'll wake your brother," the man said quietly. There was a sweet edge to his voice that wasn't right. It didn't sound sarcastic or insincere, jus… like the man knew too much, and he was aware of it.

Rom looked around. "Where's Arten? Where's my gran? If you hurt 'em, I'll…"

"You'll what?" the man asked, amused.

Picking up his head proudly, Rom tried to stare the shadowy figure down. "I'll tell the Doctor." There was a knowing certainty in his young voice, as well. He had no doubt that what he was saying was true. "And then you'll wish you were never born." He smiled proudly. "He doesn't take no shit from no one." 'Cept mum.

The man chuckled. It was a bit menacing and dark sounding, but he sounded genuinely amused. "'Doesn't take no' is a double-negative. Therefore he must take 'shit' from everybody."

A large leather gloved-hand shot out and Rom flinched, but the man just nudged his jaw fondly with his finger. "And don't swear." The man's eyes were hidden in the shadow of his hood, but he appeared to just be watching them. "Funny, I thought you'd be taller."

Branden sniffed then looked out from behind his brother. "Yeah, well… you suck." He held up the sonic screwdriver he'd been fiddling with before all of this had started.

The man simply revealed something small and cylindrical and pressed a button upon it before Branden could even fumble for the controls, disabling the kids' only real defense with a hum and a fizzle. "Uh uh." He wagged a finger at the boys. "None of that, now."

There was something totally… going on here. Rom had been captured a time or two in his life, and this bloke was just acting funny. He was enjoying himself far too much, like he was the only one in on a big joke.

Rom made sure his brother was well behind him before he asked, "what're we here for?"

A gloved thumb stroked the shadowed man's lower lip. "Well, it seems that your sister made a very…dubious deal with some very amoral gentlemen."

Violet had gotten them kidnapped. Girls sucked, Rom decided. He knew they were made of germs and all kinds of other horrible things, but this was just… she'd gotten them kidnapped! He was never forgiving her. It was decided, and he couldn't go back upon it now. "And where is my brother?"

The man held up a hand, and both boys turned, looking at the near-invisible door behind them as it slid opened, revealing a small, well-lit living cab. Among the various unfamiliar kitchen equipment was a bed, upon which their brother was sleeping, surrounded by a mound of pillows.

Before they could turn around to question the man, or even see him in the light, they were both pushed into the cab and the door slid closed behind them.

XYZ

Jack had to grab the younger Violet's shoulders and hold her down as the Doctor pulled the shrapnel from her leg. Despite her own efforts not to, she was struggling against them with the pain of it, and the restraints weren't nearly enough for as bad as she got when the Doctor gripped hold of the thin slice of metal with a pair of pliers.

His eyes met the Doctor's and he nodded, then leaned down into Violet's field of vision so she couldn't see what the Doctor was doing. "Vi, honey…look at me. I know you're trying, but can you be still?"

Before she could respond, the Doctor ripped the bloody sliver out of her leg then held it up, examining it with fascination. It was almost a foot in length, twisted in the middle and terribly pointy. He tossed it away, however, when Violet howled in pain, then passed out as the remainder of the air left her lungs.

They both watched her for a moment, to make sure she'd draw in another breath, and then began working to temporarily fix her leg enough that they could move onto the more frightening issue of her shoulders and head. The second and third degree burns were bad looking in their own right, but then they'd found smaller pieces of shrapnel in her exposed skin, various cuts and scrapes…

It was just as the Doctor had been afraid of—she really had been on the verge of regenerating again without immediate medical attention. Which was weird—considering the Violet he'd left in his own timeline had been just the same as she was now, sharp features, blue eyes and thick, straight hair. What had changed? How much of this…time pocket she'd created were they destined to intervene in?

Fortunately they were all the way through patching up her face and shoulders with the tissue regenerator, and had gone back to the problem of the leg fractured by shrapnel slicing into it when she woke. Jack looked up at the Doctor, who was trying to do as much bone knitting as possible before she inevitably started squirming again. "You're going to have to talk to her."

The Doctor over-concentrated on the knob he was adjusting, frowning at it as if it had done something wrong. "I can't talk to her, Jack. Timelines and that."

A convenient excuse. Jack would have told him so, if Violet wouldn't have grabbed his arm just then, digging her broken, dirty finger nails into his flesh. "Where's Saul?"

He gently extricated her nails from his skin. "Saul?"

"Oh god…Jack…" she whimpered. "You were supposed to hide…" She shuddered, her head falling back onto the table. It was also then that all coherency left her. "Jack, they're coming…oh god. They're…I tried. Saul. Greg was supposed to…"

He squeezed her fingers, careful of the just-treated burns on the back of her hand. "Vi, just relax a bit. We'll straighten this out when you're a little better."

The Doctor pulled away the long telescope-like device for repairing tissue and stared at her critically, looking through her and past her. "Well, we're irrevocably involved in this little story, now." Wiping his hands, he slowly made his way to the head of the table. "Violet, what's going on?"

Her eyes were so black when she looked up at the Doctor, Jack had a pretty good idea that she wasn't actually seeing him. "Saul."

"It's the Doctor, and Jack," the latter explained as compassionately as he could. The girl had almost just died. "Maybe we should just let her rest. She's not making any sense."

The Doctor took a step back from the table, even though it looked like he was going to protest. He shook his head. "We're all tied up in this now. The more we can get out of her now, the easier it'll be to just… release her back into the timeline and she won't even know anything's happened."

Sometimes… Jack could smack the Time Lord. She was a sentient being in need of a little comfort. He'd sucked at inter-personal relations for, oh, a century or so now, but even he could tell that. Even his own heart, which had seen too much and had been broken too many times was moved to pity. "Release her? Like releasing an injured animal back into the wild?"

Before the Doctor could respond, Violet opened her eyes again. "They're coming. Someone hasta get to Branden and Rom… before they do…"

Ok, Jack was SO not arguing with that. If the Doctor wanted info, he'd get it. "Who is coming after the boys? The Time Agency?"

She was lost some place else, though. "Where's Saul? Jack…please. Where's Saul?"

The Doctor had taken another step back from the table. Quietly he turned and went back to the control room, probably to set a new course. He'd frozen stiff when she'd mentioned her brother's names; he wasn't taking chances with the boys' safety.

Which left Jack to provide something resembling sympathy and comfort to the girl and possibly get some more information out her. He thought he'd seen her at her lowest point when Owen had brought her back to the Hub. This, here… this was just painful to witness. It was like watching… the anatomy of self-destruction. "I'm sorry, Vi. I don't know what's going on right now, but I know its hell. And I know whatever's coming in the future, you're not going to remember a bit of this. I guess… well, I'm just really sorry." He kissed her still-tender and just-repaired forehead, and she relaxed a little. Seeing this, he stroked the bit of her hair that wasn't damaged by extreme heat, trying to soothe her a little bit further. "And…we're going to straighten this out."

Her eyes lowered slowly, like a toy boat rocking gently as it sank beneath the surface of a pond. "I'm not sorry I did it," she whispered, in a strange echo of what an older Violet had told him just a day before. "Saul…I'm not sorry I did it. He's…" she let out a sad breath and drifted off to a sleep borne of exhaustion.

Who the hell was Saul, and how did this new character fit into this already twisted story? Shit…he hated when timelines got muddled. The Doctor hated it because it was general badness and his whole 'bigger picture' perspective didn't like the messing with the order of things. Jack just hated it because it hurt his tiny mortal head.

That being said… Jack still couldn't say he'd have done anything any differently, if put in her position.

TBC…


	9. Chapter 9

The Doctor hung on the doorframe of the infirmary. "We're about to come out of the Void." He looked down at the figure asleep on the examination table. "What about her?"

If that was the Doctor's way of asking how she was doing, he was making a really lousy job of it. He was becoming more distant with each minute. Soon he'd fail to acknowledge her existence. "She's out like a light. No new news." Except for one thing, that had come up when he was scanning her thoroughly, checking for anything, injury-wise, that they'd missed.

It was probably what Owen had meant when he'd said 'something else,' but he wouldn't know without a physical examination, which he wouldn't chance without Violet's consent. He wasn't sure he should tell the Doctor. Poor damned stupid kid.

Sighing impatiently, the Doctor stood up straight. "Well, I'm dropping us out of the Void, then another minute or two to get out of the Vortex, so hold on to something. Then I need you to come with me." Without waiting for a response, he departed.

Probably his nice way of saying he needed backup.

A few moments later, the ship rocked uncomfortably. A virtually non-existent vibrating grew until Jack's teeth rattled. He threw an arm over Violet to keep her from falling off of the cot. As the trembling made everything in the room shake, he pressed Violet's head to his shoulder to keep it from snapping to and fro.

There seemed to be a moment of freefall, and then everything stopped abruptly. The body beneath him jangled like a dead weight and he had to hold onto her tight to keep anything bad from happening.

And then it was still. Still holding on to his unintentional charge, he let out a sigh. Travel between dimensions sucked. Was probably crappy on the gas mileage too.

"Jack," Violet mumbled into his shoulder. "Where's Saul…"

It took him a moment to process that he could let go of her. Giving her some breathing room, he looked her over.

Eyes fluttering, she scratched the red, fresh skin on her forehead. "You said you'd hide him." She focused on him for the first time, and her head dropped back onto the pillow. "Shit. Wrong timeline."

"You must be feeling better."

Clenching her eyes shut, she licked her dry lips. "You had a moustache. Said your girlfriend liked it."

Ignoring her statement, he tried to find a gentle way to ask the question. "Violet…I need to know about Saul. Is he your--" he stopped short when the Doctor appeared again in the doorway.

"We're here. Leave her." He didn't even look at Violet. Like he was consciously trying to ignore her.

God. What a total asshat. "Don't you want to ask Violet what's coming for the boys, and who?"

"No," the Doctor began patronizingly. "I want to get out there and STOP it."

As Jack stood up, Violet grabbed his sleeve, even as she eyed the Doctor suspiciously. "Jack… don't tell anyone," she whispered. "He is."

XYZ

His face scrunched in thought, Rom watched his brothers sleeping on the daybed from the cab's uncomfortable kitchen chair. It could have been worse. There was food. Stuff he could actually make, even—cereal, milk, stuff for sandwiches. Juice to drink. A couple of books to read. It could have been a lot worse, as far as captivity went. But still…

This whole thing was weird. The man in the dark hood was like some kind of dead zone to him. It wasn't so much that any attempts to probe psychically were refused—it was as if the man wasn't there at all.

"You're just wasting your time with the scans," someone said from behind him.

Rom turned, looking up at his kidnapper, standing in the doorway he hadn't heard open. "What's WRONG with you?" Even if the guy had no latent psychic ability, Rom should have felt him at least…existing.

The man's thin lips pulled back in a smile, his eyes still hidden by the leather hood. "Little trick I picked up from some monks on Estis Three." He leaned against the doorway and crossed one ankle over the other, arms folded across his chest. "You don't block the mental contact, you just…funnel it elsewhere. It's simple, really."

Rom frowned. "And you're telling me this because…?"

The man never flinched. "Valid question, I suppose. I'm not the enemy."

"Scuse me if I don't believe that." On the bed, Branden began to stir, rubbing his eyes, his cheeks still swollen and flushed with sleep. The younger boy moaned, sounding like he was about to cry, even before he was completely awake. "Bran…shh, its ok."

Before Rom could hug his brother, the boy started crying. "Want the Doctor…" he whimpered. "Want mum."

Glaring at the man, the older boy ground his teeth. "You'd better take us back. Cos if the Doctor hasta come looking for us, you won't like it." He once blew up a whole prison colony to get mum back. Rom had no doubt the Doctor would come for them, and when he did, it wouldn't be pretty. In light of that, he felt it was decent of him to give the bloke fair warning.

As Rom patted Branden's back in consolation, Arten started crying.

The man stood up, entirely unfrightened of the threat. Stalking over to the daybed, he scooped up the baby and held him in one arm like he was a cat or something, head supported with his hand. He opened a small cupboard concealing a temporal food preservation unit and took out a pre-made baby bottle, then plugged Arten's mouth with it, stopping the inconsolable sobs. "Nah. I don't think it would come to that. All the same, I'd like to meet him."

Branden stopped moaning long enough to make a face at their captor. "Yeah. You'll meet him. Right 'afore he kicks yer a--"

The man tisked. "Language, children. Language."

XYZ

Rose scribbled down what her daughter was saying as quickly as possible. She tried not to look at Violet; that'd just make this so much more difficult. Her child was sitting in the big leather chair in Jack's office, intermittently spewing off random memories, being sick and passing out. It was a vicious cycle that Rose was contributing to.

Every time Violet would come to again, she'd start reading everything off the notepad from the beginning, refreshing the young woman's memory of where she'd left off, and she'd make herself ill remembering, until her eyes rolled back in her head and Gwen Cooper had to catch her before she went face-first into Jack's desk.

The recovery time was getting longer and longer.

Gwen would just look at Rose, and she'd clench her eyes shut when Violet moaned as she came back around.

Around the fifteenth or sixteenth time the residual Retcon caused Violet's memory of her lost years to reboot, she woke, but didn't seem to have any awareness of the things that Rose was rambling off. Finally she pushed the pad away from her and looked at Gwen. "I can't do this any more, I just can't." Even if Violet said that this was the only way she'd be able to remember what had happened with Greg and the car. What more was there to remember, if Violet was a virtual catatonic?

Slowly, Gwen leaned Violet back in the chair, making sure she was propped up against the armrest enough not to slide out. "We were almost there."

Rose rubbed her temples. "I think I can guess what happened. I don't need to torture her any more—mentally or physically. She WAS in the car with Greg. The later her. Maybe she did prevent the crash. Or she was there, and he died anyway."

The other woman nodded, leaning back against Jack's desk. "Which means we want someone to check the grave, see if there's a body in it."

Gesturing her ascent, Rose yawned in sadness as much as exhaustion. "And she paid for that opportunity at a second chance with the knowledge of how to jump universes and navigate the Void. And she gave that up to an organization with… questionable-at-best motives." Rose's eyes grew wide and the pen dropped out of her hand, clacking dully against the carpet. "Oh god. The boys."

XYZ

He really should have let Jack do this, except Jack was checking the string of unconscious security, looking for signs of Retcon. Because the second he removed the gag from the Jackie Tyler tied to the hard-backed chair in the kitchen, she was off and running.

"You stupid bastard!" she yelled. "I don't know what you're up to, or what you're involved in, but you get those boys back! You get them back, I don't care what you have to do, you…" the moment her hands were untied, she whipped around and slapped him.

He didn't react, other than to grab her wrist when she pulled back again. "What happened? Who took them?" Didn't she know that he couldn't help, if he didn't have any information?

Jackie scowled at him. "Do you think I know who it was? It wasn't as if I could ask his name after he taped my mouth shut!"

The Doctor looked at the unconscious men in the kitchen—obvious security detail. All the lights were out, phones were dead, both land and mobile. The adhesive on the tape used to bind Jackie up was a twenty-fourth century brand with several half-lives, until eventually the tape would give way entirely. "One man did this?"

He was a time traveller that was for certain.

Out of breath, Jack made it into the kitchen. "No visible signs of what knocked them unconscious. Could have been a gas or something, but then Mrs. Tyler would be out too. No signs of the Time Agent base for Retcon, either."

Jackie spun around in the chair, making it more difficult for the Doctor to undo the tape around her ankles. "Who the hell're you? Where's my daughter?"

The Doctor sighed. "With your 'favourite' granddaughter. That jolting of the time line I felt? Yeah, that was her. Doing something really stupid. So if we could focus here—what did this fellow look like?"

Jackie frowned, concentrating. "Leather jacket with a hood, I couldn't see his face. He was awful polite about the whole thing, for being a dirty-rotten kidnapper."

"I told Greg about this…" Violet muttered from the next room. I told him to be ready… for something. He was coming back for Saul…"

The Doctor sighed, his chin hitting his chest as she came into the doorway, her clothing a bloody and charred mess, holes torn through it and her skin still raw. "Violet, quit wrecking time lines and get back in the ship."

She squinted, seeming to really concentrate on him. "Oh hell. The time line…"

His head bobbed in a patronizing manner. "That's why you have to get back in the TARDIS."

Looking to Jack for something, she put her hand on the wall for support. "Missed you, gran."

The old woman shot the Doctor a dirty look. "I don't see why she has to--"

Before Jackie Tyler could continue further with that statement, Jack nodded to Violet. "Why don't you go back into the TARDIS. We'll straighten this out."

Violet looked torn for a moment, glancing at all three of her elders absently. "Yeah. Time lines. Stuff."

"We'll be having a talk about this, later," the Doctor announced, practically shooing her away, then turned back to Jackie after Violet stumbled back toward the ship. "She can't stay here. The more interaction we have, the worse this whole situation is going to get." He grabbed her upper arms. "Is there anything else you remember about the man that took the boys?"

Jackie rubbed her forehead. "I don't know. The coat was so…odd. It was…scaley, maybe. Brown and sort of green. He kept tugging the hood down over his eyes. Like he wasn't sure it'd stay in place." Rather suddenly, everything caught up with the woman, and she bit her lips as tears welled, catching in her mascara-caked eyelashes. "What happened to them?"

Jack and the Doctor glanced at each other. It was Jack that spoke up. "I don't think it was a time agent, that isn't their standard issue. More like a freelancer. The kind of guy the Time Agency usually goes after and puts down. But who the hell knows what's been going on there since I left."

The Doctor squeezed Jackie's shoulders again, and the woman yelped until he loosened his grip. "Did he look familiar to you, in any sort of way?"

For some reason, Jackie looked away. "He did. But I don't know how."

"Could it have been Greg? Maybe he was older?"

Shrugging out of the Doctor's grip, the older woman took a few steps away, glancing around the kitchen as she wracked her brains. "No. His skin was lighter. He had long hair, straighter." She gestured with her fingers, indicating where the hair had stopped, over his collar.

Grabbing the Doctor's arm, Jack pulled the Time Lord away from Jackie Tyler. Leaning in, he hesitated, and then just came out with it. "I think the boys are ok," he whispered, not sure what to say to the lady rubbing her hand over her mouth, trying to swallow back panic for three small children forcibly removed from her care.

"Why? Because he didn't hurt anybody? That could mean anything."

Jack slid his hands into his pockets, searching for some sort of distraction. "Violet would have to tell you that. She doesn't want me to say anything, but…I know what she was going on about before."

The Doctor turned away from Jackie slightly. "I don't have time to pry it out of her. Just tell me what you know." There was something so cold and calculating in his voice. Jack knew it well; the Doctor could be quite the bastard when the need arose. But this was his own… what? Family? He didn't seem to acknowledge them as such. He behaved as if they were all some sort of entourage that just so happened to (quirkily enough) include an infant and a whole assortment of people who just so happened to share portions of his biological material. A whole slew of people who were, culturally, much more human than Time Lord, despite what their genetics may say.

For Christmas, this year, Jack was going to buy the Doctor a few new ties, and a FUCKING CLUE. Usually around the holidays they sold them at ASDA in the bargain bin.

Jack didn't have time to make a snide comment to that effect, though, because of the yawing sound coming from the floor above them of a TARDIS departing.

Without caring for Jackie's feelings, he and the Doctor both made a dead run for the steps.

XYZ

It took a while, but Violet's eyes seemed to focus again. She pulled her knees to her chest and stared at the papers on Jack's desk, some new sadness had overcome her, and she wasn't inclined to share.

Since she wasn't going to open up willingly, there really was very little to do for her. Gwen had offered to find Ianto and get some coffee started while Rose sat in the over-sized chair on the opposite end of the desk as her daughter, looking over the legal pad and the pages of notes, trying to figure out what had lead them all to this point. She was worried for her sons, if her terrifying suspicion was correct, but her modified super phone couldn't contact the Doctor or Jack.

She hoped that was because they were already on the case, and were returning to the dimension where they'd left the boys. WHY had she left them alone? What in the hell had she been thinking? Run off with the Doctor for a few hours' for old times sake, have a few minutes alone…

The imaginary point that Violet seemed so obsessed with in the middle of the desktop seemed to dissipate and she licked her lips, eyes beginning to roam the room. "I know what they wanted me to forget," she whispered.

Rose put her pen down. "What is it?"

Her eyes were glassy, but nothing leaked out. "My—my…" she couldn't say it. Whatever it was. It was something too personal. She had that same panicked look about her that the Doctor got when trying to broach the topic of just what their little TARDIS band meant to him. "They wanted me to forget him. They wanted me to forget…"

Blinking rapidly, Violet shook her head and got to her feet. "And…and I remember where I hid FRED."

Before Rose could ask—Violet was out the office door, and it slammed shut behind her.

TBC…


	10. Chapter 10

Rom had said he could handle it, but the man had made sandwiches for them anyway. That was after he'd fed and burped Arten then hushing him mentally, and sending him back to sleep.

The guy looked totally…natural; his big, powerful hand gripping the blunt butter knife slathering peanut butter on bread and then cutting the sandwiches diagonally, the way his mother always did. Branden was hungry enough to take the sandwich without a fuss. He flopped down with the metal canteen plate in the room's lone chair, and then began munching away.

The older boy was much more cautious. He took the sandwich, but didn't eat it. "What's goin' on? I just wanna know that. What'd my sister do?"

The faceless man smiled, proceeding to lick the jam off of the knife. "It's a very long story. And an old one. Time lines are funny like that."

Rom just couldn't quite make himself eat the sandwich. He slid the metal plate onto the table. "No. Tell me." He hated having to act grown up. He only had a one in seven chance of tying his shoes right the first time. But if Violet had gotten into trouble, he'd haveta pitch in and fix it. "Cos I wanna know why I got dragged away from my special project." 

The man smiled. "Of breaking down a twenty-first century refrigerator in an attempt to build a temporal accelerator to grow your baby TARDIS into a real TARDIS so you can save the universe?"

For some reason, that made Rom blush. "Maaaaybe."

And that made the their captor's smile spread into an unabashed grin, flashing perfect, white teeth. The blinding light coming from the bloke's mouth reminded him of Captain Jack. "A long time ago, she did a foolish thing with good intentions. Which is how most foolish things are done. And…here we are now." He shrugged. "There really isn't much to tell. But maybe you have some information for me." Sitting on the edge of the bed, he leaned forward, excited. "Maybe you can tell me what he's like. The Doctor. I've heard so much about him."

Something about that sounded very wrong to Rom. He licked his lips, pondering the sandwich, which he wasn't really excited to eat now either. The Doctor had given a long talk to both of the boys recently about eating food given to them by evil people. Or at least morally ambiguous people, which Rom felt the man in the leather coat fell into. "He's the Doctor. And he's awesome. I mean, he's no Captain Jack. But he'll beat you up good. So I guess that's all you gotta know."

The man sat back in the chair and smiled wistfully. "I heard he once talked a Dalek to death. Is that true? And that he met Shakespeare. I love Shakespeare…"

Rom rolled his eyes, rethinking his position on not eating the sandwich. He was rather hungry. "Great. You're a fan."

Shrugging, the man guiltily rubbed his lower lip. "Of Shakespeare? Always. The anthology of his work was the only book we had until I was five and we got off of Sparta Two. My da would read it to me every night. The Tempest was my favorite… he'd do all the voices."

"Of the Doctor." A crazy stalker fanboy. That's who had kidnapped him. This was just the worst. And Rom had been crapped on by a dinosaur once. So he knew what the worst was.

The man's cheeks went from a light olive tone to something redder. "Maybe. I just… my da told me all the stories when I was young. About your sister, and your mum…and the Doctor. Not that I think my da would lie. But I just wanted to know if they were true."

He'd gone from gushing to embarrassed in two point five seconds. It was kind of… unsettling to Rom, who expected certain things from bad guys and kidnappers. "How's your dad know all that stuff about the Doctor then?" Mum told him stories about their travels before he was born. Sometimes the Doctor ponyed up one or two at bedtime, but they were always extremely saniitsed (Rom was young, but he wasn't stupid…nobody sings a song and Daleks run away), but even he didn't know about the Doctor meeting Shakespeare. But the talking a Dalek to death thing did sound right up the Doctor's alley.

"Travelled with him," he announced with a puffed-up chest like a preening bird. "In fact, that's how I got charged with making sure you three weren't—" Before he could finish, there was a loud beeping coming from the cockpit. "Ahh hell. They found us."

Well, at least the bloke was sort of a good guy, Rom thought as he followed the man into the dark cab. Despite the fact that he was a crazy Doctor -stalker. "Who found us?"

Throwing himself into the oversized pilot's chair, the man took the controls. "The Smurfs! Who do you think? The Time Agency." He pushed one of the levers forward and grabbed something that looked roughly knob-like. "Hold on to something. This is going to be bumpy."

Rom looked for something to grab onto just as the ship jerked, kind of the way the TARDIS did when she didn't like what the Doctor was doing to her. The screen in front of them went from stars and space to the electric blue of the Vortex, then back to space again. When they bounced back into the Vortex, Rom slammed into the floor and decided it was safest to just stay there. "What're we doing?" And how did this man have access to time as well as space?

They popped in and out of the Vortex again before they stopped, hovering over Earth, the best planet in the universe (because it had dinosaurs, ninjas and giant robots). Checking all the censors, the man sat back in the chair, sighing with relief. "Trying to lose them. We're safe for now. It'll take them a while to follow us here, and the ship needs to rest."

Brushing off his hands, Rom got to his feet. He looked behind him, into the living area. Branden was holding onto Arten, and they both seemed to be ok. "Rest?"

"He's still quite young and this stuff's just a little too much."

Rom looked around the ship again. It looked like a glorified shuttle. It was only two rooms. "It's a TARDIS? Why can't I hear it?"

The man smiled. "Cos I told it not to talk to anybody but me. The universe is a dangerous place. You can't trust that things'll go according to plan. Better not let anyone know that they've stolen something much more magnificent than a mid-range puddle jumper. Especially when you're as… wanted as I am."

Looking back one more time at his brothers, Rom closed the door, shutting himself in with the hooded man. "So you're wanted and dangerous and all this other stuff. And you try to look all tough, wearing a dragon skin coat and you have that pendant on the zip, from the space pirate's guild. But you're helping us. And you have a TARDIS…so you're a Time Lord-ish person of some kind…So who are you, really?"

He pulled back his hood, revealing a long thin nose and pale blue eyes. "Well, I was hoping we could avoid this. But…I guess it's better than you little globs trying to escape on me. I saw what you were trying to do with a refrigerator and your sister's old junk from the cellar. So here goes. Saulamieretolenlunshengo Sheel Patel. Saul, really, to anyone who knows me. Gallifreyan names are so…pretentious, aren't they? Da says mum thought it was more merciful than how her mother named you all. Anyhow, technically…you're my uncle."

Rom smacked his forehead. He should have been able to sense Time Lords crossing time lines, but he just wasn't that advanced in his studies, and he really hadn't been looking for it. "So why did my sister send you, from the future, to save us?" He wasn't allowed to watch Terminator but it sounded kinda like that. What he read on Wikipedia about the movies. He wouldn't stay up late and hide in the doorway while mummy and the Doctor were watching it. That'd be… wrong.

Flipping switches and preparing for another jump, the man, Saul, avoided the question. "It's a very long story. Lets just say… Da and I have been a bit busy. We really couldn't get here, till now."

Probably busy running, Rom thought. This man was very good at it. Maybe running from the Time Agency. "Wait a second," the boy chimed in suddenly, stepping up to Saul's pilot seat. "You said your dad told you stories about my sister. You never met her? Your own mum?"

He looked away, suddenly very interested in a tiny purple display showing radiation readings outside the ship. "I told you it was complicated. The Time Agency would have found us…" He shook his head. "Still. I'd like to meet her. And the Doctor. I've heard so many stories."

Rom rubbed his forehead. This whole thing made his brain hurt. "How long's it been?"

The ship rocked as they jumped back out of the Vortex to a lonely point in space. The pilot stared out the window, maybe remembering something, probably imagining something that had never been. "Twenty years, two months, one week and four days. Been just me and da all that time."

The boy whistled. "Your time sense is insane-o good." He still only knew it was bedtime when his mother came to drag Branden off for his bath.

Saul was quiet when he spoke, twisting some loose strand on the armrest of his chair. "It's rather easy to tally up. She hasn't seen me since the day I was born."

XYZ

"Violet!"

Somewhere outside the conference room, Gwen heard Rose Tyler calling after her daughter. Mobile phone to her ear, she wandered to the glass window, watching the woman storm across the hub. "Wayne? I'll call you back." She shut off the phone and rushed after them, out the door and down the metal steps.

But she wasn't fast enough. Before she was even past the work stations, she heard the sounds of a TARDIS making a hasty departure.

"Jack's gone off again, hasn't he?" Ianto's lips were pursed in misery as he came down the steps behind her, carrying two cups of coffee. 

Trying to think of something clever to say, Gwen took her time, grabbing one of the mugs from her teammate and taking a long sip of the hot brew before responding. "That was Violet that just left, I think."

The well-dressed Welshman stood very stiffly in his tailored suit and tie. "He left with the Doctor earlier, didn't he?" Gwen's silence was all Ianto needed. "He said he wouldn't." 

She slid her fingers through the handle of the mug and let the cup burn her palm. "It was an emergency."

"It's always an emergency," he said dispassionately, and then turned around to leave.

Unable to think of the right thing to say, Gwen sighed and grabbed his sleeve. "There're some things happening. I'm sure it isn't like—I mean, it's not like the Doctor and Jack…" She knew the relationship that Jack experienced with Rose and the Doctor was genuinely upsetting to Ianto, that it was some form of jealousy that she couldn't put her finger on. But Ianto really couldn't think that Jack and the Doctor…

Slowly, Ianto turned back around, looking at her with an aloof sort of criticism in his eye, as if she wasn't bright enough to understand just what lay between him and Jack. "It goes beyond that, doesn't it? It always has. But after that first time, when he just left. He promised to at least say something."

"I'm sorry. I'm guessing he meant for one of us to tell you. It wasn't like he left without saying anything at all. We knew where he went." But it wasn't Jack saying it to Ianto in advance, which was probably all that their man of impossible jobs wanted. "But…I was just on the phone with the coroner's office, trying to avoid an exhumation, and I couldn't quite do it. I'm sure we can keep ourselves busy until Jack gets back." She gave an encouraging smile. "Feel like a little light grave robbing?"

XYZ

When they got to the unused bedroom where the Doctor had parked the TARDIS, they saw it sitting right there, despite what they'd heard a minute or so prior. Scratching his neck, the Doctor looked at his ship for just a moment before getting an idea. "FRED."

Dashing through the corridors of his own time machine, the Doctor made his way down to the cargo rooms. Not sure what else to do, Jack followed, an angry Jackie on his coattails.

The halls got smaller and smaller as they made their way to the nearly forgotten part of the TARDIS, the cargo rooms. They were dingy and crowded, the metal walls getting darker and dirtier the further in they went.

The Doctor had told him once that he'd had to shield them specifically, ages ago, so that they could work on Fred inside the ship without the sort of… dimensional difficulties that could befall a TARDIS inside another TARDIS. It turned out that had actually helped the two ships mate. Jack had no idea how TARDISes reproduced before that, and quite frankly, he was a little afraid to ask.

Throwing open a door, the Doctor stopped right in the threshold, running his fingers through his hair. "Oh this is just…" he sighed. "Well."

Jack caught up, breathing heavily as he looked around the cargo room. "You know, I think we're meant to be part of this time line. At least this version of it."

Blowing out a deep breath, the Doctor pushed past Jack and ignored Jackie at the other end of the hall completely. "Yeah, well, she's just gone and changed the timeline AGAIN by taking her TARDIS. Who KNOWS what she's stirred up this time? And one of the baby TARDISes is missing."

Before Jackie could ask what it all meant, the metal walls around them rumbled and vibrated, almost like when they were coming out of the Void. Just as Jackie reached out to hold on to a trembling wall for balance, a wind ripped through the corridor and the Doctor spun around, running back to the cargo room, once again pushing past the president's wife as though she were of no importance at all.

They watched the familiar urn materialize, Jack and the Doctor almost shoulder-to-shoulder, Jackie trying look between them. "What's going on?" she asked. "What's this got to do with those boys and getting them back?"

The Doctor folded his arms over his chest, waiting for the urn's pilot to make an appearance. "Everything, possibly. Or nothing at all. As with most things about this situation…it remains to be seen."

The nearly-invisible door in the carved pewter-like surface opened and Rose peeked her head out. "You're here. I was so worried…Where're the boys?"

"We don't know," the Doctor informed her in a grim, passionless tone. As if it was unfortunate, but not unexpected.

Like these things always happened in their dark little world, Jack thought. And he knew they didn't. "No one was harmed here; I think there's every real possibility that they're OK."

Rose had frozen the second she'd been told they didn't know where the boys were. Jack wasn't even sure if she was breathing.

Of course, instead of comforting her, or even making platitudes about finding out what happened to assuage a worried mother, the Doctor turned on Jack with dark, angry eyes. "Why do you keep saying that?"

"Because…" Jack began with a sigh, pinching his nose. "Violet--"

"Jack, DON'T," a tired voice called out behind her mother. It was the older Violet, from his own timeline that appeared. Despite the shorter hair and the more appropriate clothes, she looked much like the Violet who had just left them—tired, worn, and emotionally broken down. Licking dry lips, she eyed the Doctor scornfully. "He wouldn't understand."

"That you're selfish enough to destroy the universe and harm your brothers to get what you want?"

The way the Doctor stiffened just after the words were out of his mouth, Jack knew he regretted it, but he didn't take them back. Violet's lower lip trembled even as her eyes hardened. After a moment, her jaw locked too. "Something just turned up on my external scanners in the house," she informed him coldly. It came from the Vortex. You might want to do something about that." She retreated back into the ship.

He was about to say something to Rose, but she glared at the Doctor. "Don't talk to me," she whispered harshly. "Talk to HER."

The ship jostled again, this time not from an internal disturbance, but an external one. The Doctor sighed, sliding past Jackie one more time. "I can't right now. Haveta deal with the temporal dampening clamp…before those idiots tear a hole in time and space." He used the convenient excuse to step back away from her, then turned on his heels and made haste to the control room.

Jack and Rose stared at each other, trying to figure out what to do. "Well, I've been suffering with him for the last three hours. You're welcome to him," he informed her.

Sighing, Rose walked toward the large metal entryway for the cargo room. "Yeah. I've been having about as much luck with her. We have to end this."

It was Jackie who broke the silence with an obscenely loud, not to mention furious declaration. "I'll end it—with a frying pan to both of their heads."

XYZ

"Hold that thing down!" Saul ordered.

"What thing?" Rom looked around the control in a panic as ugly, fat cruisers swarmed them, trying to snap on a temporal clamp. They'd almost gotten them once already, but Saul had managed to shake them off. The Doctor tended to treat his TARDIS like a time machine that also happened to travel in space. Saul seemed to handle it the opposite, as far as he could tell.

The man was flipping switches and turning knobs so fast it was almost a blur, manoeuvering past the grapplers on their front ends. He kept glancing out at the cruisers, his breathing accelerating. "Time control override!"

Rom wanted to ask what the hell a time control override looked like on a TARDIS that wasn't half bits, baubles and space junk, but then he saw the label—masking tape with red magic marker declaring it the time override. He through it down and it resisted, so threw all of his weight into it. "What's this do?"

Licking his lips, the man slapped a red, ominous looking palm-sized button and they jumped almost instantaneously into the Vortex. "Lets me activate the Randomiser. Which is the only way I've ever gotten away from these guys for more than ten minutes at a stretch."

Randomizer? Rom slowly let his hand fall away from the big switch. "Why doesn't that sound good?" Cos, like, if it was good, they'd have used it the first time, before temporal clamps were even brought into this exercise.

The Vortex seemed to have some kind of spasm around them, energy and nothingness pulsing blue and then red then black. They jostled once, and then they were in unfamiliar space. Sitting back in his pilots chair, Saul-the-kinda-sorta-Time-Lord breathed a sigh of relief. "It's going to take us a while to figure out where we are. And it's going to take even longer to move on to some place else."

"Okaaaaaay." But there was more, Rom just knew it.

Saul slumped a little as he unclasped the top of his coat, to let in some cooler air. "I swear I wouldn't have done it if there'd been another way…but this is safest, which is in my orders." The boy was still demanding an explanation. He frowned, searching for some kind way to tell Rom. "It takes even longer still to shut the randomizer back off again on a child-ship."

"How long is long?"

Saul looked way guiltily. "Couple of years?"

TBC…


	11. Chapter 11

"Why can't we just land on some planet?" Rom was hanging upside down off one of the wooden chairs, his face turning redder by the moment.

Saul never batted an eye. He just kept leaning against the wall, his massive arms folded across his chest. The silver band on his left bicep, denoting his rank in the thieves guild, shined in the flourescent lights of the unattractive ship. "Because I was told to keep you safe."

Branden looked out from under the bed, the hand mixer he'd turned into a superhero peaking out with him. "What if we went to a safe planet? They make those."

"Have you ever been to a safe planet?"

Both boys nodded. "Tons of times," Rom confirmed. "Come on, it's been two weeks. Its too…small in here." One room and a cockpit was not enough space for three growing boys. It wasn't even enough room for Arten, and he just learned how to roll over. "They let prisoners outside for exercise."

"I'm not holding you hostage!" the man reiterated. "But I have my orders."

Rom folded his arms over his chest, trying to look equally stubborn. "From my stupid sister that messed up timelines in two different versions of reality!"

The boy under the bed scrambled out and got to his feet, bringing the hand mixer doll with him. "He has a point! She's just a stupid girl."

"She's hardly as awesome as Captain Jack. And she isn't gonna find us, the way the Doctor's gonna." Rom laid out his argument as logically as possible.

Saul rolled his eyes. "Have you ever been to a safe planet that was actually safe?"

The brothers looked at each other. "Like, one that was supposed to be safe, and something bad didn't happen on?" Rom blinked. "No."

"My point exactly." Crossing the tiny efficiency, he pulled more milk out of the food preservation unit, even though Arten hadn't woken from his nap yet. "Da has a theory. He thinks the old Time Lords never left Gallifrey because Time Lords inherently attract trouble. That, maybe, that stuff is just somehow drawn to Time Lords because of what they can do. So what do you think happens if we wander off to the nearest planet? Four of us?"

Rom's shoulders slumped in defeat. "Not only will the Time Agency find us but we'll end up causing the collapse of an entire civilization, getting separated from each other, and with food poisoning."

Flopping down on the daybed, Branden sighed. "Like that one time."

"I miss mum," the oldest boy moaned, getting a bit sniffly.

That was all Branden needed to start all-out crying. "And bedtime stories. And… and…" Snot dripped out his nose. "And hugs and stuffs!"

Testing the temperature of the bottle, Saul ignored them, and went back into the cockpit. The co-pilot chair had been modified as a makeshift pram, and the baby was starting to stir. "I'll get you back home as soon as possible. But I have to get you there in one piece. As soon as I am sure we're not being followed, and as soon as I can reset the randomizer, we'll get you home. Ok."

Before the baby even started crying, he popped the bottle into the wriggling creature's little mouth. Arten started sucking loudly, and he let off the distinct psychic impression that he was very displeased about it not being his mother's milk, but it'd do.

Saul did the only thing he could, and tried to sooth the boy, explaining mentally that he'd do his best to get the child back to his mother, but he doubted Arten could understand. Most of the psychic messages let off by the boy were more of emotional impressions. Too light, too dark, too hungry, too wet. Not enough mental or physical contact with his mother and the Doctor.

Still, Saul was thankful that the psychic connection between them worked fairly well, and the boy only cried when he was truly hungry or bored. He wasn't sure what he'd do with a baby crying constantly for its mother.

"I hate everything in the entire universe," he heard Rom grumble behind him.

XYZ

And just like that, Rose was tossed aside. Well, not necessarily tossed. But the Doctor had grabbed her arms and rather firmly moved her out of the way, completely forgetting about her as he went back to turning knobs and settings that she hadn't figured out in decades of travel. "So we're not going to talk about this?" she asked rather calmly.

Cranking something vigorously, he shook his head. "Not when someone's trying to put the temporal equivalent of a boot for unpaid parking tickets on the TARDIS."

The ship rocked suddenly, and they were thrown away from the console and into each other. "Ok, give me a time and place," Rose urged as he righted himself and went back for the controls.

The lights in the centre column seemed to go blue then yellow, then back to green and the ship lurched one more time. "She's the one who started this entire chain reaction!"

Maybe she should let her mother in here with a cast-iron skillet. Jackie Tyler'd probably get further with the entire lot of them, than Rose had gotten so far. "She made a mistake, fine, we can kill her later! But—but…" Rose huffed in frustration as the ship rocked and she barely had time to grab hold of the nearest railing. She was still wrenched around and ended up falling into the jumpseat.

The Doctor came flying toward her, his long arms out in front of him. His hands slamming into the tall back of the chair kept him from landing on top of her, but just barely. "But what? If I don't keep matching frequencies, and cancelling out the Time Agency, we're going to be stuck here, until some amateur idiot comes and unlocks it! And why? Because Violet doesn't listen."

Pushing away from her, he went back to the controls, numbers flying by so quickly on a monitor she had no idea how he could read it. "You act like that's something new! I could have told you that when she was two years old, and I told her NOT to stick those marbles up her nose. And it's not like YOU listen. To ANYTHING I happen to say, for that matter!"

He'd been kicking something under the console repeatedly until she said that, then he stopped and his head shot upward. "Listening to you gets me into these messes. Reapers, sand dunes of Malizfreso... Torchwood Office Picnic, and no, I'll never let you live that down, and a handful of completely unconscionable, unqualified, uncultured Gallifreyans running around the universe. I think I've done enough listening to you."

The sonic screwdriver got rammed into some open orifice of the console, causing an entire section to light up blue. He stepped around her and began working on what some other monitor was telling him in a language she couldn't comprehend. "Now move it."

If they weren't about to have their ship incapacitated, she'd save her mother the trouble and give him some head trauma. "You didn't listen to anything Jack said, did you? Obviously, since a handful of plebeian Time Lords is all my fault, you won't care when I say this. But she had a reason for doing what she did."

"Because she hates the universe and wants it to explode."

The ship rumbled, but didn't toss them about as the Doctor recalibrated whatever it was that was keeping them from being grounded. "Because she wanted a family!"

Both hands still engaged in changing things on the console, he spun around. "She has one of those already!"

Rose folded her arms across her chest. "You're an idiot." The rumbling stopped and everything grew incredibly still. "After we get the boys back, I'm staying here with my mother."

The Doctor turned to her, a look of indignation on his face. "Oh no. You're not leaving me alone in time and space with those little monsters."

The amount of restraint going into this conversation was almost unbearable for Rose. "No. Those 'little monsters,' as you put it, are staying with me."

With that, the Doctor froze entirely, as if she'd just said something incomprehensible. "What?"

"I think you heard what I said."

XYZ

Violet looked from the display to Jack, rather annoyed with what he was suggesting. "Well, it's a little hard to scan for anything with the temporal pissing match going on out there. The only reason we're not caught in it is that FRED is hiding in the footprint of the other TARDIS. "I don't know if I even CAN find the boys. Especially if the vortex trail is that old."

"Keep trying," Jack urged.

Violet stopped what she was doing. "They're YOUR people. Why don't YOU contact them?"

He frowned. "Do you really think they'd listen to me?"

"Good point." She stared at the figure that had appeared in the doorway. "What?"

Jackie Tyler didn't come any further. She stayed cemented in the threshold, like crossing it would somehow kill her. "I kept telling your grandfather… I kept telling Pete that you were getting to be too much like him. And he said don't worry about it. You've got a lot of responsibilities, and a lot to worry about. But it isn't right."

And since there was no fairness in the universe, Jack moved toward her grandmother.

Violet's lips pressed together as she tried to figure out a way to get them into the vortex without alerting the Time Agency to their presence. "Go on. Gang up on me. But can't we do this at a better time? Like once the boys are safe?"

Jack folded his arms over his chest. "We're not ganging up on you. But wouldn't this be easier to solve, if everyone was working together?"

"No." Despite the firmness in that statement, Violet's eyes were wet. "I don't play well with others."

The young woman's grandmother regarded her angrily for a moment, before turning her attention to Jack. "Chip off the ole block that one is."

And somehow, Jack had found a kindred spirit. "I'm just waiting for the part where they come into contact with each other and the charge of that much stubbornness in one place causes a spatial anomaly and the entire universe is sucked in."

XYZ

Branden was seriously afraid his eyeballs were going to pop out of his head. He and Rom had been hanging upside down off the daybed for… a lot of minutes. "Why isn't Uncle Jack going to save us again?"

Sighing, the older boy glanced at his brother. "Cos he's not the Doctor."

There was silence while Branden pondered the implications of this statement. "But the Doctor's no Captain Jack."

Rom groaned, his lips flush and his eyes turning red. "Who has a TARDIS? And who blew up, like, a whole place just to get mum back?"

"And we can't figger out where we are goin' next, cos of the random thingy an' we can't go any place fun cos of some reason I can't remember…" Branden's knees flew over his head and he landed on the floor. "Why can't we go see Captain Jack?"

Rom slid off the bed as well, landing on the hard metal floor. "Because he can't time travel any more, cos he's not allowed, dummy. Rassilon's Breath. You think everybody can time travel."

Waving his hands excitedly, Branden started bouncing on the floor and breathing rapidly. He might be having a good idea, he might be about to pass out. He wasn't able to tell. "But he can call the Doctor, right? And Captain Jack is like… all the time, cos he's kinda undead or something. So'z we find Uncle Jack, and we tell him to call the Doctor!"

Rom slapped his brother on the side with a heavy hand, knocking the younger boy over. "You're completely brilliant!" Scrambling toward the cockpit, Rom grabbed hold of the doorway before he slid inside thanks to his momentum. "Saul! Saul…We need ta…"

But the man was gone.

TBC…


	12. Chapter 12

"And why can't you just… find them and go there?" her grandmother asked. Again. Now Violet knew where Branden got his tendency to ask the same damned question over and over again expecting a different answer.

Violet wiped a hand over her face as the scan of the vortex dropped out again. It wasn't her ship—it was the other ship. It was blocking her ability to track its departure point by randomizing its exit from the vortex. "Because they keep jumping. The thing is, a TARDIS needs to plan a rematerialisation pattern. You can track that energy, and figure out where another TARDIS has landed." She looked up at the white ceiling, something tugging at her lips. "The Doctor and I spent weeks practicing it, when we finally got FRED running enough to do it. That was right before we picked up Greg, you know. Had to stop after that…passengers don't like playing hide and seek in the Vortex. They wanna see things."

Leaning against the console, Jack slid a little closer to her. "And?"

She stood up straight. "Right. The point of the story. Randomizer. It means the boys're safe. Because that's Time Lord technology. You can't build those things, they're grown."

"Well, thank God for something," her grandmother breathed. The woman was still terribly angry with her, though, because she wouldn't come any further into the room and her arms were still crossed.

Not that there was anything new about that. Her grandmother stopped being pleased with her around the time they'd had that three-day screaming match over her sharing a room with Greg. Of course, she'd lost, and they'd ended up getting married in a quick civil ceremony two days later.

Her grandfather had come into the building through a fire exit, trying to avoid attention, but her grandmother had a big mouth, and in the fifteen minutes it had taken her to do paperwork and exchange hasty vows, there'd been cameras outside. It made Violet wonder just how she'd been unaware of that sort of attention growing up, but somehow she'd been blissfully oblivious of just how famous her grandfather was on this world.

She checked one of the monitors built into the console. "See, he's done it a few times, slipped in and out of the vortex without the randomizer. But then the trail stops here, because they popped out, courtesy of the randomizer, and I don't know where."

She began modifying the model to hopefully predict where they'd pop back into the Vortex, if she couldn't predict where they'd pop out. Her jaw began to relax and her shoulders fell as she became distracted. "It's a young TARDIS. It can't jump again right away. Really young."

"How young?" When Jack put a hand on her arm, she shuddered and almost pulled away, still unused to signs of affection.

She looked at his hand a moment, then up at him. He was a good guy, deep down. Probably didn't need to be dragged into all of this. "Couple hundred years? It can't be too young if it's managing Vortex travel."

Violet licked her lips. "Too young to handle re-randomization in a timely manner, otherwise they'd be back in the Vortex again. But old enough to pull it off. I'd say… Fifteen to twenty years, but aged to about a hundred and fifty in a generated temporal field. That'd account for the need for recovery time." She was looking up at the ceiling again, her arms wrapped around herself. "Temporal field generation usually works out about as good as cloning. With cloning you have spontaneous mutation to deal with. With temporal fields, you get little time bubbles that pop up inside, like air in a hypodermic needle, so the time in the field is never entirely true."

"Wait!" Jackie chimed in, finally taking a few steps away from the door. "A Time Lord had them? How's that work?"

Licking her lips, an unsteady smile passed her lips. "He's alive out there somewhere. And he has the boys." When Jack put an arm around her, she actually grabbed hold of his hand this time, not so much used to the contact, but needing it, the way she'd needed that hug from Gwen Cooper when she'd discovered the remnants of her sad and pathetic existence in Cardiff. "Saul's out there. I guess he's not so little any more, is he? Not since the last time I saw him." A garbled laugh escaped her. "He was so little. Oh Jack, wait till you see him. You picked him up, and you said how sorry you were that he looked like his dad."

She swallowed. "And then I had to leave him. Two Time Lords in the same place and time… they'd have found us for sure. But obviously they didn't. He grew up. He grew up and got the package I left for him, because he has a TARDIS, and he's doing what I asked his father to do…" Violet squeezed his arm suddenly. "What do you think's happened to Greg? Do you think he's still out there? Do you think—if Saul came for the boys…But why didn't they stay?"

Tears threatened to leak out of her eyes, but the overwhelming emotion passed the moment her grandmother's hand connected with the back of her head. "THAT is for making me a great-grandmother! I'm too young for that!" She slapped Violet again. "THAT is for muckin' it up so I don't even get to see him!"

With the third slap, Violet pulled away, rubbing her skull. "What was THAT one for?"

"For making all of this mess to begin with!"

Violet scowled as Jack stepped between the two Tyler women. "God. You sound just like the Doctor! It's not like I planned this! I was just trying to fix things. How was I supposed to know the Time Agency would want more than their fair share?"

Jack grabbed her arm, turning her away from her grandmother so they couldn't keep going at it. "That should have been the FIRST thing you thought of. They're hardly trustworthy, and YOU should have seen the possibility."

She deflated. "All I could think was that he was dead, and I could fix it. I couldn't see further than the end of my nose."

XYZ

"Well, ok." Rom scratched his head. "Bran…we're on our own." He looked back behind him. "Saul's been abducted by aliens."

Branden moaned. "Why can't /I/ get abducted by aliens? Then I'd get ta go to a planet and get off the ship an' stuff.

"Nobody's going anywhere."

The boys both jumped as the voice rumbled through the ship. Branden clung to his brother's side.

Fear turned to indignation when the rumbling voice started laughed. They let go of each other and put their hands on their hips, like someone was going to get a good double scolding. A head popped up from a small, almost unnoticeable hole in front of the pilot's chair. "Sorry, was trying to override some of the controls to maybe trip the randomizer offline."

The boys let out a collective huff of relief. "Why couldn't you just say that? Why'd you haveta disappear?"

Almost in explanation, Saul ducked his head under the plate again. That was so much like the Doctor it was almost comforting. "Oh, I don't know." His voice was muffled through the flooring. "You two were thinking deep thoughts. I didn't want to disturb you." He grunted as he tugged away at something, and a spanner came flying out of the hole. "Heads up!"

The boys stepped aside and it clanked to the floor, which instantly started the baby crying. Rom just rolled his eyes and started rocking the co-pilot's chair, trying to get his baby brother to stop. It had been a whole month, and they all missed their mother. "Branden was thinking… if we can get into a time zone where Uncle Jack is, we can find him and he can get a message to the Doctor."

Saul's head peeked out of the grate. "It's a very good idea, Branden. There's just a couple problems. We only have a fifty-fifty chance of landing in a time where Jack Harkness is. Well, one where he is, and he knows you guys, and he's not part of the Time Agency. And that's who we're hiding from. You see what I'm saying?"

Branden wiped his hands over his eyes in defeat. "Then can we find a planet with like no life on it and go outside and play?" It had been a month since they'd gotten kidnapped right out of their Gran's totally sweet house, and two weeks since their last random jump. He'd just die (and regenerate, and die and regenerate…) if he hadta look at these walls for one more minute.

As the baby took to sucking his thumb, Saul looked back and forth at the two older boys. "I'm going to regret this. But…maybe."

XYZ

"Did you hit your head?" The Doctor asked with uncontrolled sarcasm. The boys? Not living in the TARDIS? They lived in the TARDIS even when Rose wasn't travelling with him. "They're going to stay here, and you're going to stay here. Just as soon as I fix this."

Turning back to the controls, he began compensating for the next pattern, wondering if and when these people would ever stop. He could keep doing this all day, but could they?

Rose's eyes were boring into the back of his head. He could feel them. They had special powers. "No. I'm staying with my mother, and so are the boys. Because you can say what you want about my mother, but she never treated Violet differently than any other child, and so far she hasn't with the boys. Which is better than what you're doing right now."

The Doctor threw his hands up in the air. "And that's the problem! They're not other children! They're Time Lords who operate on human morality. I have managed to single-handedly plunge us back into Gallifrey's Dark Ages. So when the universe is destroyed, who've I got to blame but myself?"

An alarm sounded on the other side of the console. "Hold this!" he indicated the lever in his left hand. Without question, Rose grabbed it as he slid around to the other side to beat some unsuspecting piece of equipment with a mallet. "And yes, I'm a hypocrite for thinking the Time Lords were all a bunch of stuffy, over-dressed, pompous idiots with no sense of humour and an allergy to emotion, but it's what kept us from destroying the….oh hell."

When he muttered the last bit and grabbed hold of the console, Rose braced herself. "What?"

The ship didn't lurch like before; it began some motion that felt like circles and spinning, in different directions, both at the same time. Needing another hand for stabilizing herself, Rose let go of the lever. It flew upward and the ship felt like it was falling facedown. She flew across the console, bashing her side on random protrusions before landing on the Doctor and smashing to the grill floor with him.

It rumbled like the ship was being smacked off a linoleum floor, but the spinning stopped. "This is why you have to stay here," he breathed into her ear. "I need someone to save me."

"We beat their lock thingy?" She started sliding out from under him, biting back a groan of discomfort, a bruise already forming on her exposed forearm.

Holding out a hand the Doctor helped her to her feet. "Yeah. No temporal lock. There's just one little catch."

Rose stood, then wrapped her free arm around her abused side. "Do I even want to know?" It was more of a statement than a question.

"It wasn't before they dragged us into the Vortex."

Sighing, Rose pushed her hair out of her face. "Just like old times, huh?"

The Doctor changed one of the monitors to an outside view. "Something like that." He examined the blue and red swirling around them for a moment. "Oh yeah, and our temporal locator burned out when we shook them off." He grinned. "But all of our limbs are in one piece! And hey, look, no staying with Jackie if we're trapped in the Vortex!"

Rose gingerly sat in the jump chair, rubbing a red mark above her elbow. "Yeah. Right. Whatever. Just fix it so we can get the boys back."

Opening a hatch, the Doctor dug out his sonic screwdriver. "Your wish is my command."

TBC…


	13. Chapter 13

Neither of them had said anything for the last hour. The Doctor had set Rose on the task of popping off panels so he wouldn't have to waste time getting into them as he tried to repair the locator. Besides their stuckness, there was something else hanging between them as they worked on the ship.

"Are you really going to leave when this is over?" he asked finally…just when Rose wasn't sure she could stand the silence any longer.

As a panel gave way, she turned off the sonic screwdriver and looked up at him. The Doctor had one arm digging impossibly far into part of the console, and Rose wondered just what he was searching for in there. Possibly his common sense. "What do you think?"

He winced as he grabbed hold of something and twisted it, deep within the workings of the machine. "That you're going to be the death of me."

Rose tried not to sound bitter, but she wasn't quite sure it came across. "Been there, done that."

When he pulled his hand out of the console, he put the sonic screwdriver between his teeth and reached in with both hands. Rose looked down at the identical one she was holding in her hands. "Have we reached some new level in our relationship, where I get my own, or do you have a collection of them?"

"What?" he managed to mumble around the tool. Finally he grabbed it out of his mouth. "What? This? Oh. Well, lets see. Violet made off with one, I've broken two in the last five years, Branden ate one and Rom seems to think they're for putting on elaborate shadow puppet productions. And someone stole the one out of my coat yesterday. I ought to buy stock or something." He sighed. "So you're really going. Once we've got this all sorted and the boys are back safe. You're just going to… go back to Earth with them."

Her knees were tired so Rose went from crouching to sitting on the grate floor. "Yeah. Just go back to Earth." She tried to venture a guess as to what his problem was. "Look…Kids don't always listen. Even adult ones. Most often adult ones. My mother could have spit fire, she was so mad when I ran off with you."

Looking up at the ceiling, he sighed. "Most children can't destroy the universe with a toaster and a ball of string."

Rose frowned. "Point. But they're here. I mean—what's done is done."

He froze then, slowly pulling his arm out of the console as if an idea had come over him—something that had never crossed his mind before. "Why did you want children?"

Shrugging, Rose thought about it. "I don't know. Why does anybody want anything?"

His hands dropped to his sides and he turned to face her, staring blankly across the few yards between them. "You wanted them. I didn't want them."

"Well, it's a little late for that, isn't it? Plenty of time to lodge your protests. And it's not like I didn't have help," she responded coolly, turning back to her work. "I had no idea you were so flexible. Getting your head up your arse like that is a real talent. I don't care if you want them or not. I don't care if you're convinced they're going to destroy the universe or that some stuffy person from your home planet wouldn't approve. They're here now. Deal with it. And quit TREATING them like you wish they weren't here. Wishing they weren't here isn't going to make them go away or get us out of this situation any faster."

He just…stood there. No reaction, nothing. She looked down at his long, thin fingers, wrapped around the sonic screwdriver, hoping he'd at least be clutching the thing angrily. They never…TALKED. They just did. And it killed her. He seemed to have no actual thoughts on their situation—just visceral reacting. Twenty-some years of this since they'd been back together. And it just dawned on her now how completely unacceptable it was. What did that make her?

She turned away from him and sniffed, her nose suddenly running. "Would you just… quit being such complete and utter shit?" Rubbing her nose on her sleeve like a girl a third of her age, she let out a heavy breath. "Look, we'll stay with my mum, and then you won't be bothered by it. In the mean time… quit being such…shit."

He stiffened, his shoulders rising slightly. Then he relaxed and turned back to her. "You're not leaving, and that's my final word. You're staying in the TARDIS. So there."

Rose was becoming sick of always holding it together. For her children, for this arrogant bastard of a Time Lord…for the day-to-day people that got inevitably caught up in their madness. It was making her tired. "So now you're ordering me around?"

"I order you around all the time, and you never listen. Don't run off, don't do things that could end the universe… no one listens. None of you."

Putting her head on one knee, she twisted the sonic screwdriver around in her fingers, wondering just when she'd get a rest. Some sort of break from it all was what she needed most. A break from running and never stopping. "Learned from the best."

XYZ

Violet slammed her hand against the console.

"What now?" Jack asked, wondering exactly at what point in the current crisis-of-the-week it would be a good time to ask if she'd please stop being a stupid Time Lord and quit giving her mother a heart attack.

"I found the next time and place the boys popped out at."

Her grandmother made a frustrated sound. "I thought that was good. That's what we've spent the last hour watching you work on, right?"

Violet looked up, looking like there was something inside of her that was about to burst out. "Yes! Yes, I'm trying to get them back? What more do you want?" she screamed suddenly, and Jack understood why Jackie and Violet living under the same roof worked out as badly as the two of them seemed to imply.

Trying to snap her out of it, he grabbed her arm. "What's wrong now?"

Her nose flared, and for a moment, he was very much reminded of his first Doctor. "You really don't want to know."

XYZ

"Remember what I said? About the life I couldn't have? Well, I didn't have it. And yeah, they're all going to get paradox happy and blow up the universe without other Time Lords to stop them. But…" He looked around for some sort of inspiration. Some way to say what he wanted to say, because he just couldn't get it out. It wasn't in his nature to just say what was on his mind. Hell—it wasn't in his nature to even THINK what was on his mind.

"What?" Rose urged. It was still tough to know when to push and when to let it go sometimes. "Damn you and your always trying to protect me, and damn you and your always trying to protect yourself. Life hurts. Still have to go on living."

The Doctor looked up at the ceiling, and Rose wondered if he'd even heard her. He was rather good at that whole selective hearing loss thing. "She almost died again today. Not the Violet that you were with. From another time line." He stopped working again, but still kept his back to her. "And it wasn't that. That was bad enough. Watching her regenerate once. But you didn't see her. The burns, the shrapnel… And that was from being chased through medieval France by irresponsible Time Agents. But…" The thing that had been laying between them since the incident with the mating ships bubbled to the surface, and she could tell that he wanted to get it out, even if it might kill him to say so much.

Finally, after a moment of hanging on the edge of a cliff, it all came rushing, like a body toward the ground. "She's had her mind invaded on that other Earth. She's been through hell and back… and I put her through it. Because I wasn't someone else."

Rose actually chuckle at that. God… she was tired. She had almost lost her daughter today and hadn't even known it. The mere thought seemed to drag her under. "If you weren't you, who would you be? You're the Doctor. You do what you do."

"And what is that? Tinker? This is the day they warned me about. The day that my tinkering did something irreparable." He leaned against the console in defeat. "I'm not mad at them. I'm mad at me."

Putting down the sonic screwdriver, Rose ran a hand over her grease-smudged face. "No one tells me anything. You or her."

"I am who I am. A thousand years of bad habits included. You knew that when you started travelling with me." He paused. "And I guess you mean to rectify that."

Rose supposed it some alien version of honesty. "Yeah, and you should know by now I'm not going to listen and I'm going to run off." She bit her bottom lip. "And I like tiny…edible people."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "I could have just stopped off for a bag of Jelly Babies. Then we wouldn't be trying to save three tiny Time Lords from the mess created by a much bigger one."

Something about sweets being the cure to all the ills of the universe made Rose laugh. "Do me a favour."

"What?"

Picking up the sonic screwdriver she turned back to the panels she was trying to loosen. "Get over your damned self."

XYZ 

They were running back to the ship. This is exactly what he didn't want to do; what he didn't want to happen.

Branden squealed, practically drooling on his shirt as the lower hatch swung down and they ran up the ramp. Saul went first, the baby under his arm like a squirming rugby ball. He had another hand on Branden's collar, and Rom bringing up the rear. As soon as the hatch was sealed, Saul leaned against the cool metallic door and sighed. "What did I tell you?"

"Don't insult the natives?" Branden asked hopefully.

"Before that."

Rom looked guiltily at the floor. "Don't talk to the natives?"

Saul sighed. "Don't leave sight of the ship. And if you see natives… get back inside?"

Tossing himself into the navigator's chair, Rom sighed. "We were making a sandcastle."

"I don't care."

Branden threw himself next to his brother on the same chair. "It was a 'portant sandcastle."

The baby was gnawing on his own hand happily, as if it was the only work to be done of any importance, Saul noted when he looked down. Thank…whoever for small favors. He was the most improper Gallifreyan ever conceived and he didn't believe in his mother's people's heroes any more than he believed in his father's gods. "Like it was important when you took apart the refrigeration unit?

The boys blushed. "It was, kinda," one of them muttered.

Saul pointed toward the small cab and waited until the children marched through, completely tired out physically, but still mentally wound. "You were trying to build a time acceleration field, weren't you?"

"Maaaaaybe."

Dumping the baby onto the bed, he watched the little guy chewing on his own fist for a moment. "You were going to put your baby brother in it, weren't you?"

"Maaaaaaaaaaaaybe."

Saul tugged the hood off of his head, wiping sweat from his brow and pulling a few loose strands of hair away from his face. "And didn't I tell you that was dangerous?"

At least the boys had the decency to appear contrite, staring at their shoes. "We just wanted someone ta play with. You're always messin' with the randomizer," Rom volunteered after a bit of hesitation. "We're bored."

Running a hand through his long locks, Saul sighed. "I'm always working on the randomizer because I'm trying to get you guys home."

As the ship started up, it made a sound that was a shallow echoing of the rising and falling of the central column of the Doctor's TARDIS. Rom always looked around when that happened, wondering where the column could be hidden in a TARDIS this tiny.

Instead of asking, though, he just fidgeted, feeling like a total heel. Saul was just doing his best for them. They had been kidnapped away from their mother and the Doctor, they were bored to death and they missed home like mad, but they weren't being dissected by the Time Agency, and you'd think he'd be a little more grateful. "We know."

"Sorry," Branden sniffled.

Turning the pilot's chair around, Saul focused on the controls, taking them out of the planet's atmosphere, since they were nowhere near ready to attempt another jump.

Which was a very bad thing, he determined as he looked at one of his monitors. Because something had just dropped out of the Vortex right behind them.

TBC…


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Saul pulled one of the floor tiles away to reveal a small enclave beneath the pilot's chair. On the console, the external censors showed a ship latching on to them with a temporal lock. They wouldn't be able to move in time or space, and they hadn't seen it coming fast enough to evade it. "Hide in here."

Rom looked around at his brothers. "But they shouldn't be able to get in here, should they?"

Handing the boy his squirming baby brother, Saul frowned. "How old is the Doctor's TARDIS? How old is THIS TARDIS? A lot younger. Now get below the deck."

Without a choice, Rom sat on the edge of the floor and slid beneath, his arms wrapped tightly around his younger brother. Something started chiming. It almost sounded like the cloister bell from back home, but it was much higher-pitched and closer. Which couldn't be good, because whenever that happened at home, badness happened. "What's that?" Branden asked as the man pushed him toward the hole.

Something slammed against the hatch of the ship, just as Saul put his hand on the blond boy's head and shoved him down with his brothers, in the sea of wires and cabling. The lid clonked down over them. "You're not here," he whispered, closing his eyes.

He urged for Arten to keep his psychic presence to himself, and tried to quickly show the boys how to mask their energies. He didn't know if the Time Agency had psychics on the payroll any more, but he didn't want to find out the hard way.

It was a temporal disruptor that they were using on the door. He realised that when he heard the hum of a charge, then three deafening clicks as the disruptor tried to find the frequency and time differential used by the TARDIS locking system. This thing was a baby, and wouldn't handle much in the way of interference.

Letting out a deep breath, he threw the baby blankets into the small living cab, closed the door, and tried to clear his mind, the way the psychic monks from Elonus Three had taught him when he was a boy. He hadn't grown up around Time Lords, so he'd had to make due with whatever training his father could scrape together with what little funds they could gather. The training had served him very well 'til this point in his life but he was suddenly starting to doubt it's effectiveness against people who really meant it.

Doubt wasn't a useful emotion, he reminded himself, trying to hide his thoughts. Doubt never accomplished anything.

Tugging his hood over his eyes, he readjusted the silver armband so that his rank in the thieves guild was facing outward. He was sure that also wasn't traditional Time Lord training, but when he was fifteen, it was either join the guild or be killed by them. It had been a unique education, if nothing else. He'd learned how to beat a dead lock seal in under three minutes, which could be useful in a lot of circumstances.

"It's you," Rom said out loud, below deck. "It's not you, but it's you."

The baby let out a moan that explained just how dissatisfied he was with the situation and reiterated his displeasure, mentally, for his lack of contact with the Doctor and his mother. The psychic soothing wouldn't work too much longer on the boy and then they'd be in a lot more trouble.

Slamming his foot on the hatch, Saul made the whole floor shake. Thankfully, the boys fell silent.

There was another charge and three more clicks. There was nothing in his mind but…cereal. It seemed like as good of a thing to fill his mind with as anything else—benign and completely un-Time Lord related. That's what the monks had taught him. A complete clearing of your conscience was achievable, but only at the highest levels of psychic awareness. Fixating upon something benign was what the rest of them had to work with.

He wondered if real Time Lords had this problem.

A hissing charge then three clicks. Then four clicks. Five clicks. A yaw, then…

The pressure released from the cabin and Saul wished he had a weapon of some kind. He'd never needed them before; he'd been told he was quite a talker. But he'd never had three little boys relying on him for their safety.

The hatch released and the light from the other ship nearly blinded him. He squinted, shielding his eyes with his hand, wondering what else he could have done.

This must have been how his dad had felt, always trying to keep him safe. And from the very thing now standing at his door.

XYZ

The Doctor had reached into all of the access hatches that Rose had opened, and had begun pulling cables in and out, testing various lines and splicing a few into each other. There was an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock attached to one of the cables. Apparently it was regulating something or other and couldn't be moved, which meant more wire-stripping.

Rose took that task upon herself. She wasn't entirely sure what they were trying to get the ship to do, now that they were dead in the water. Sometimes it was better to just do and ask questions later.

Unfortunately, she thought, as she wrapped a wire stripper around a thick cable, it just gave her time to think and fume. "If it's such a grossly, abhorrently bad idea, why did you give me what I wanted?"

"Because you wanted it," the Doctor muttered without thinking, his legs sticking out of an access hatch. The sonic screwdriver hummed for a moment more, and then he climbed out. "Don't you get everything you want?"

He said it with such honest simplicity that it caught Rose off guard, and she almost cut straight through the cable. Dropping the stripper, she bent down, trying not to look at him. She took her time, using the opportunity to gather her thoughts.

Glancing over to her, there was a look both vacant and surprised in his eyes—like he had no idea what she was on about, and that he probably wasn't capable of mustering up the brain power to figure it out. "What? You don't think I would?"

Standing up, Rose concentrated on the handle, which had been wrapped in day-glo pink tape, no doubt an addition from Violet's time on board. "I don't know. I just figure you always have huge reasons for things. Things I couldn't comprehend."

The Doctor pulled out something that looked like a log house, but was really a mass of tiny transformers. He began unplugging various cables from it, his brow arching downward in concentration. "Maybe I just wanted…" He sighed. "Look. It doesn't matter. You're right, they're here now. Haveta deal with it."

But he'd said it in that way. That way that she was familiar with, because she'd used it so artfully herself in many-an-argument. The way by which he was only conceding a point to make her feel guilt of some kind. "You know, if you ever said what you were really thinking, I would probably just flat-out die from shock? How long have we been travelling together? How long have you NOT been saying what's on your mind?"

The Doctor kept searching the ceiling. Like it held some sort of wisdom or answers. "A long time, Rose. Longer than with… anyone." The last was said like he'd just realised it.

She blew her dark fringe out of her eyes. "That's practically a promise of commitment from you, you know."

Putting down the sonic screwdriver, he turned around, still holding the ugly and complicated device in his hand. "Do you remember what I said when Sarah Jane was with us?"

"That you have no idea what the cause of my morning sickness could possibly be?" It had come out just as snarky as she'd intended.

He turned a little red. It would have been amusing, the way his ears seemed to boil, if this weren't such a critical juncture. "Could you try to be serious for a moment?" Rose would have said something about pots and kettles, but cleaning his brain matter off the walls of the console room would be tedious. "When our paths crossed the first time. Not during that whole slimy creature in the sewers incident. I said I wouldn't just leave you anywhere. So there."

What he was trying to say, she supposed, in his dense, Time Lord sort of way was that he wasn't leaving her. She was stuck with him forever. There'd be no running off for her, because there was no neat and tidy divorce proceeding for people who made promises to one another while being hunted by aliens or in front of chip shops.

She ran a hand through her hair, just wondering how this was going to work out. "Fine. I won't leave with the boys." Not getting them back wasn't an option. He was the Doctor and she was Rose Tyler, and she'd be damned if some rogue agency that wasn't supposed to exist any more harmed her children. "How much longer 'til we have control of the ship back?"

The Doctor looked at the completely un-worked-on bundle in his hand. "Oh, maybe about… eight days?"

XYZ

They were two big burly men with a zillion guns. Emphasis on the guns.

At least, that was all Saul could see. Each of them had two double-barrel pistols pointed right at his face. He was vaguely aware of the mass of humanity holding said guns.

Still standing over the heavy metal plate containing the boys, Saul raised his hands casually. The armband glinted in the light coming from the other ship. "You've got me." He looked up at the men's faces for the first time. There was something in their eyes that let him know he was going to have a tough time talking his way out of this one. Trickery was in order.

"I think you know what we're here for," one of them said, in some accent he couldn't quite identify. They were just as much out of time as he was.

He took a step forward, as if there was nothing special about the spot he'd been standing on. "I don't have the score from the Antiquities museum."

One of the men moved forward, his close-cut coat swinging open as he searched for the switch to open the door to the rest of the ship.

The funny thing about his ship—it was exactly as big on the inside as it was on the outside. Exactly. Hopefully they wouldn't figure out that the internal dimensions did not allow for shielding, wiring, or anything else that goes between an interior and exterior wall. The TARDIS was just learning how to be trans-dimensional. Most people didn't notice. But he was suddenly very paranoid about it.

So he reached out with a carefree hand to slap the control that opened to the rest of the ship. It slid open, the glaring fluorescent lights poured through, and one of the men stepped inside.

They were too smart to both go. One remained at the entrance, gun trained on Saul's head, while the other had a look around for little children. Or possibly… signs of little children.

He watched the man poke through the contents of the room, and he was instantly thankful the boys hadn't brought much with them, and that the ship had chosen to conceal the few things they'd left out. He would thank the ship later. There was no telling what mental contact with the ship would do right now, or who it would alarm.

Saul let his arms droop a little, giving the appearance of some false sense of security. He knew better than to give these men that. But it did cause the man with the gun to lower it just a fraction. Another inch or two, and he'd be able to turn to the side, move himself out of the line of fire and disable his opponent. "I told you," he said confidently. "I don't have the money."

"Shut up." And the gun was back up at his face. Well, hadn't he just read that wrong? "We know you spaced that out on the edge of the Tella galaxy. Seven thousand gold bars make a really effective asteroid field."

Just the way Saul had intended it. The whole theft had just been an elaborate escape tactic. "So what do you want?"

Both guns were pointed at him in opposite directions. "The Time Lord children."

"Sorry." Saul shrugged. "You guys beat me there." A small smile crept across his lips. "Which means someone beat YOU there."

One of the men, the one with the short coat, had put the gun away. "Look at it this way. Without them, we still have you, pretty boy."

Saul was preparing to launch into plausible deniability. They'd been chasing him and his dad for years. They didn't actually have confirmation that he was who they were looking for. But they interrupted him before he could even get the words to form.

"And this ship. An unauthorised time ship. Which means we can do whatever we want to you." The man folded his arms across his barrel chest and grinned. "But I wouldn't try anything. We went for a little insurance before all this started."

Swallowing, Saul took a step backward, so he was back on the plate where the boys were hidden.

"We have your dad."

TBC…


	15. Chapter 15

The breath caught in Saul's throat. They couldn't have his father. They just couldn't. He'd left his dad on a safe world.

Closing his eyes, he thought about 'safe' in terms of the boys hiding below his feet. Safe meant being chased back to the ship by men with large hunting javelins. Safe… wasn't really in their vocabulary. Nor had it been in his. "Where's my dad?"

Both men grinned. They had him. They knew they had him. And their joy couldn't be contained. "Tucked away in a prison colony."

The breath caught in his throat because he knew it was true. His father wasn't supposed to be there, but he was there. And it was all Saul's fault. He hadn't followed the instructions to the letter. Now he had the lives of three little boys, and his da in his hands. It figured that it'd be inevitable, that he'd mess this up.

"Why can't you just leave us alone?" He felt miserable saying it, but had managed to keep his tone cold and unrevealing.

The man grinned, showing yellowing, uneven teeth. "Because you have something we want."

Travel between dimensions. OH yeah. That.

XYZ

"You know," Rose whispered, barely holding back a gasp. "We're wasting time."

"I know, but…" the Doctor muttered back. And went right back to what he was doing. "Time's…" he groaned. "Relative."

Rose didn't hold back on the puff this time, but still being quiet out of habit.

"This mean you're staying?"

"Not if you stop again to ask stupid questions." Something went ding and they both froze for a second. "What the hell's that?"

"Time locator's recalibrated." He leaned across her and slapped something on the console, causing a sharp edge to catch her in the back. "We've got two minutes till we're ready to fly."

"Then get on with it."

.  
XYZ

Jack hated being the mature one, sometimes. He seemed to be left to it a lot lately. "You can't do that."

"Why can't I do that?" Violet whispered harshly.

"Because…I said so." Well, it worked with Torchwood sometimes.

She turned the corner around the tiny ship anyway, makeshift weapon in hand, the soles of her leather boots grinding ever so slightly in the dry earth. When she made it to the open door, she stopped. "You go first."

"Why do I have to go first?"

"You're the cute one."

"I'm not the cute one!" No wonder the Doctor was always so exasperated every time the situation involved her.

"They'll like you better."

Everyone liked Jack better. That wasn't the point. "Why don't we go at the same time?"

XYZ

Its you. It's you, but it's not you.

At least, that's what Rom had said. And Saul hadn't understood it until "it" had come slamming into his ship, all swinging arms and…cast iron. Then he understood that feeling that Rom was talking about. Something so very much the same, and yet so different.

He didn't even get a good look at the perpetrator of the violence that had left both time agents unconscious on the grill floor. He just stared past the whirlwind to the rather dashing fellow with the incredibly white teeth and the grin like he'd just accomplished a great feat. And he hadn't. How annoying.

Huffing, the pan-wielding psycho stood up straight. "Well, that's that," she sighed, finally looking at him and stopped in her tracks, not daring to breathe.

Something caught in his own throat.

She'd just… beat them into unconsciousness with a frying pan. She was… amazing. Like dad said.

Before he could gather up enough resolve to say anything, something slammed beneath his feet, causing him to almost jump. "Let us out already!"

The rather smart looking man laughed. "You'd better let them out. They're hellions when they don't get their own way."

Saul stared blankly for a moment at the man, but finally his brain caught up and he stepped away from the plate. "What? Oh." He pulled the grate away and Branden scurried out first. Rom handed the baby over before crawling out himself.

And then Saul was standing there with a baby in one hand, looking right past his mother, whom he'd never met, to some stranger.

"Jack… I hate you," the woman said.

"What?"

"You keep doing that thing you do! And you're doing it to Saul!"

Jack shrugged. "I'm not doing anything. I'm just being me."

Shaking his head, Saul turned back to his mother, who looked to be only a few years older than him. "Mum?" he asked, even though he knew it was her. He could feel her. They felt the same.

She smiled warmly, and it was like she was never out of his life. "Yeah. God you're big."

Over a head taller than she was. But he had a feeling that wasn't what she meant. "It's been a long time."

Rom looked back and forth to both of them, then the fellows lying unconscious on the floor. "I'm calling those child service people on mum and the Doctor. For not providing a linear upbringing." He pointed to one of the unconscious men's wrists. "Uncle Jack… is that thing supposed to do that?"

Swearing, Jack grabbed the Time Agent's wrist. "Oh hell. We're in a bit of trouble now."

"Cos we weren't before," Saul's mother quipped sarcastically, as she unconsciously swung the frying pan back and forth.

Jack let the man's wrist fall. "If we don't answer this hail, we're going to have all of the Time Agency on our asses."

Saul winced. "We have another problem." He looked his mother in the eye. "They have dad."

XYZ

"Do you think that's Jack?" Gwen asked hopefully when something blipped on the monitoring system.

Ianto didn't respond. He just continued to clear away refuse from Owen's workspace. Owen and Tosh were still 'away.' They'd taken off as soon as things got heated between the Doctor and Rose and still weren't back.

In retrospect, those two might have had the right idea. It wasn't so much that the Doctor brought chaos in his wake. It was the drama that went with that sometimes got tedious.

Gwen looked at a different set of data. "It looks like a time travel signature. It might be Jack."

"I don't care if it's Jack," Ianto said forcefully.

This was about Jack taking off without a word again. Ianto's stiff posture was making that abundantly clear. "It was an emergency."

"I don't care," the man reiterated.

There was something odd about the signature. "It's lasting longer than the Doctor's ship usually does. I think we should check it out." Ianto made no effort to move. "Jack…does his best to keep his promises. But sometimes he just can't."

Ianto turned around, something almost dangerous in his eyes. "When it's us, his team, he can't."

Gwen swung by her desk and grabbed her gun. The signal was definitely a time travel signature, and it was also definitely not the Doctor. One couldn't be over-prepared.

She checked the weapon. "Ianto–Jack may need us right now. So regardless of how we feel, we need to check it out. And his obligation is to us. He's said that. He's proven that. But there's a reason why he always goes running when they call. We might be his team, and we might have priority…but whenever they're in trouble, he's going to drop everything. They're his family."

Ianto also checked his weapon. "So as long as we've got Jack, we're stuck with them."

Gwen smiled, glad she'd managed to make her point. "Pretty much."

As they were heading out, something else showed up on the rift monitor. "Call Owen and Tosh," Gwen ordered. "I have no idea what's happening, but I have a feeling we're about to be in over our heads.

XYZ

"They have dad."

Her heart stopped a little with that. The right one. It left her a little light headed and she had to reach out for one of the high-backed chairs sitting at the ship's half-console. "Dammit."

A second later, there was a hand next to hers on the chair, afraid to touch her. "I'm sorry. I–I shouldn't have left him alone. I should have made him come with me. No matter what he was saying."

There was a thud behind her, and she turned to see Jack pulling the wrist computer off the unconscious man's hand. "If I can bypass the security code, I can send a text-only message. It might buy us time."

"Then do it," two voices said in unison.

When she was still drawing in a few sucking breaths, trying to gather herself together, Rom shot past her. "Gran! Gran! He kidnapped us and he locked us in his TARDIS for WEEKS and then he…"

"Violet Tyler, I'm gonna kill you!"

Some things were unavoidable. Like her grandmother's ire. "I thought you were going to stay in my TARDIS," she grumbled, then turned around to face the woman. "What now?"

"You leave me alone in your ship, and you get the boys kidnapped by–by–LOOK at him!"

She was still leaning against the chair when her grandmother's hand connected with the back of her head. "And you have the nerve to make me a great-grandmother, and then I don't even get to see him grow up!"

Saul was grinning from ear-to-ear when she glanced at him. Not the reunion she was hoping for, but he seemed to be taking it in stride. "Jackie Tyler?"

The woman finally softened a little. Violet remembered the days when her grandmother used to be so easy with her. Now it was all fire and ice. Ever since the night she said she was leaving Earth for time and space.

Jackie gestured for Saul to come closer and then pulled him into an unexpected hug. "You call me gran too. Anything else makes me feel old."

"Gran…" Branden interjected. "He shut us up under the floor…"

But Jackie Tyler didn't hit anyone. She just kept Saul bent over at an awkward angle, trying to get a feel for him. "Your mother's an idiot," she said fondly. "I hope you're smarter."

"Alright, people," Jack interjected, "family reunions later. I broke into the computer. What message are we sending back?"

Jackie let up on Saul and took the baby from Rom. Arten was sucking on his two middle fingers, creating enough spit to drown a man.

Violet bit her cheek, trying to get back into the game. It had always been hard when Greg had been in trouble. She'd never know how the Doctor let her mother out of his sight. "We can just not send a message. Get them here. Make them tell us where Greg is."

Jack shook his head. "No. There'd definitely be more of them than there are of us. And they like to employ a liberal use of temporal locks when dealing with anyone who isn't a Time Agent and still travels through time."

Letting out a breath, Violet nodded. "Then tell them we've escaped and they're still in pursuit." She frowned. "And Jack… stop it."

Saul was LOOKING at Jack again. "No. It doesn't account for using the text band. Try this. Tell them the situation is hot, no time to talk, do not send backup at this time, but wait for further instructions. Do not close the channel."

"Because you wouldn't close the channel if you thought you might need backup," Jack nodded and grinned. "I like him. Buys us time. But it means we have to leave Tweedles Dee and Dum here. The Time Agency will be tracking their bio signatures."

Violet finally felt like her lungs weren't going to collapse. This was all just a little overwhelming. She was shocked that he was so big. That his mental barriers were so strong. That he was so… competent. That Greg had managed to get himself into trouble with the very people who'd given him back to her. It was a mess. All of it.

Standing up straight, she tucked her shorter hair behind her ears, thinking of how she'd never get used to the length. "Can we trace the signal of the Time Agency bio-monitoring? If I were them, I'd be keeping Greg close on hand. As a bargaining chip."

Jack started messing with the watch again, something frustrated passing through his eyes when it wouldn't do what he wanted.

"Here," she offered, tossing her screwdriver. "Try this."

Jack caught it, and tossed it back. "Mini deadlocks," he explained. "Even on data encoding."

Saul grinned and tossed something smaller and sleeker to the other man. "Can undo a deadlock in thirty seconds." He tried to hold back his pride. "Thieves guild, since I was fifteen."

Violet had to smile. "We're going to have fun catching up."

XYZ

The Doctor straightened his tie. It was a useless gesture, since he always kept it loose and tucked in at an odd angle. Ok, maybe not useless, Rose observed. Maybe…out of character was more like it.

She tugged on her shirt and felt a small breeze in the middle of her back. Reaching behind her, she found a hole where something had poked her, causing a terrible bruise at some point in the last several minutes. "Well?"

"Now you're suddenly anxious to get on with things," the Doctor breathed.

Rose was so not letting him play that card. "You are the one who said it'd be finished calibrating in two minutes. Which was…" She looked at her watch. "Eight minutes ago. Where're we going?"

Letting go of the tie, the Doctor pushed a button on the monitor and jiggled it a bit. "I don't know. I've got a few choices. There's this one receiving point at around the forty-second century. I've seen some asynchronous technology from there today, when Jack and I were in Jackie's place, looking for the boys. I have another signal reach through the vortex, following that first signal like a tracker following footprints."

"But?" Rose could recognize a 'but' a mile away.

"But there's also this third signal. Earth, Jack's time zone. And it's the strongest. But…all three of them intersect at one common time point."

"So which one do we follow?"

TBC…


	16. Chapter 16

"Jack, stop it."

Jack shifted slightly, still looking over Violet and Saul's shoulders at the blipping light on the console monitor. FRED's white lights hummed contentedly around them, even while it tried to work on the current problem. "I'm not doing anything."

Violet backed up a step, causing the former Time Agent to also take a step back. "Quit it."

Saul glanced to the other man, then to the woman he recognised only through intuition as his mother. "What?"

Turning a dial on the console, she set the trace on the signal to run a bit faster. "Both of you, just stop it."

Saul tried not to grin, and when he glanced at the other man, he could see that 'Jack' was trying to do the same.

It wasn't some secret that Saul was trying to keep. He did think the other man had…admirable qualities. But he had no idea why his mother was getting so upset about it; or so upset about the other man seeming to reciprocate. They hadn't said two words to each other that were not about the problem at hand, and somehow she knew. And it made her uncomfortable.

Saul decided that he liked his mother. He also liked having someone to worry after him that wasn't his da.

Setting the TARDIS into motion, Violet began guiding the ship towards the endpoint, the place where three inter-time communications signals intersected. "I'm going to send one of you to help Gran feed the boys if you don't behave yourselves. Jack…I don't need to be psychic to know what you're thinking. Saul–you think too loud. Just… let me do this. I have a bad feeling we need to get your father back as quickly as possible. Because if the Doctor is behaving true to form, he'll need a rescue–or at least a distraction–pretty soon too." She sighed, her shoulders slumping and her head bowing just a bit.

Violet–his mother (it was weird to think of a real physical person that way–she'd always been this ephemeral idea from his father's stories) was tired. He could sympathise, at least. He'd been running his whole life too. Running was taking its toll on her, and she hadn't been doing it nearly as long as he and his father had. That sort of told him that other bad things had happened in his absence.

Spontaneously, Saul turned to the other man. "We have a few minutes. Jack, can you make sure great, gran…er… Jackie doesn't need anything? I've been alone with those boys for a couple of months–they'll tag team her, if she's not careful."

"Gran can hold her own," Violet muttered absently, never looking away from the monitor or moving her hands from the controls.

Jack's eyebrow twitched when he glanced at Violet, and Saul folded his arms over his chest, giving a slight nod as he did so. Jack could play the subtext game. It made him like the man even more.

It was kind of a relief to actually enjoy the presence of his mother and family. Sometimes he'd be afraid, from all the stories his father told, that his family would be larger than life and too difficult to measure up to. Rom was shorter than he imagined, Branden whinier than he imagined, Arten messier than he imagined, and his mother more…human than he imagined. She even had decent people for friends.

"I'll be back in a few," Jack offered as he left the console room of Violet's ship.

His own was stashed in a shielded room a few decks below. There were a few…spatial-temporal issues that cropped up with having a TARDIS inside another TARDIS. But he'd let her make the call, and she'd made the right one–hers was more powerful than his and would be able to do the calculations faster and traverse the vortex with a lot less hassle.

Jack was gone, and they were alone.

He glanced over her shoulder, wondering if she knew it was a trap. Coz it was.

"Of course it's a trap," she said absently. "You're broadcasting. And I know your barriers are better than that. I couldn't hear a peep when I got here."

That's because he'd thought she was the enemy. Taking a deep breath, Saul worked on putting his mental barriers in place. He wondered if it would have been easier and more intuitive if he'd have learned these things from a Time Lord, and not just from random psychics and empaths around the universe.

"Vi–mum." The word was weird in his mouth. "I wanted to say…" He had no idea what he wanted to say. "You're… nice." Nice? That was all he could come up with? "And…and we'll get dad back. And…" He'd run out of things to say. Usually he had his… thing more together than this. He had to. You didn't survive in the Thieves Guild if you couldn't keep your act together and at least pretend to be a smooth operator. "And thanks."

The last bit was muttered. He felt like he should be hugging her, but he didn't want to make her uncomfortable.

She smiled at him, and it made his hearts do weird things. Then her hand clasped over his, and she looked him in the eye. "We will get him back." He could sense her turmoil, even though she was far better at hiding her emotions than he was. "Not how I expected this reunion to happen." She sighed and slid her hand away. "I think it comes with being part of this family. Everything gets messed up…all the time. Nothing's ever simple."

Taking a chance, he wrapped an arm around his mother's shoulders and squeezed. It felt odd being so much bigger than her. He felt like he should still be a little boy for her, somehow. If only he could manage it.

Sliding a hand around his back, she gave him a returning one-armed hug. Good enough, he supposed. The best that could be done under the circumstances. Or at least, that's what ran through his mind when the ship jostled and he almost slammed into the centre column.

As it was, his tight hold was the only thing that kept his mother from being clipped in the midsection by the edge of the console.

Here they go again.

XYZ

Here they went again.

The Doctor wasn't a fan of Torchwood. He had a litany of reasons built up over the years. But Jack and the gang had been rather nice, giving Rose something productive to do during her pregnancies, when time travel was right out. A home away from home if you will. Even if they were a slightly evil to moderately misguided organization, they could still hold their own most of the time. He liked that about them.

Which is why he hoped Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones realized they were in way over their heads. Possibly even above their pay grade.

But when they'd stepped out of the TARDIS, he'd been too far away to do more than watch both of the Torchwood Three members enter the warehouse, without drawing attention to his rather obviously parked time machine. The last thing he needed was the temporal boot for unpaid parking tickets in space and time.

He looked back at Rose. "Alright. Here's the plan." He sighed. "Never mind. I don't have one. Lets just get in there and figure out what the damage is."

Keeping an even pace, he tried not to draw any attention to them. Whatever was happening was going to happen, and them rushing in before they had information wasn't going to help things.

"So." He started off casually, feeling for Rose's hand. It wouldn't do to get separated just now. Which was usually when this sort of thing happened. Hand-holding was a preemptive measure–like with the boys. If he had hands, then they couldn't hit each other. It was like that with Rose, but more about like… abductions and wandering off and things. "Back there. In the console room. What was that?"

She let him take her hand. Which was something. "It's whatever you wanted it to be."

Oh that was not helpful.

Crossing the street, they made it to the long side of the building, walking as unassumingly as possible. They could have been any couple taking in the evening air. "Well, I just want to know. So that I know."

Rose sighed. "It was what it was, ok? Can we talk about this once the boys are safe?"

Wait a second. Was she the one avoiding the topic? That wasn't how these things were supposed to work. He had it on good authority, in fact. She was supposed to say things and he was supposed to be the one fobbing them off until later. Later being never. It was why their relationship was so comfortable. That was why it worked.

Coming up to the door Gwen and Ianto had gone through, the Doctor glanced around for the obvious signs of a trap. He knew better though–they were the Time Agency. They were all about the un-obvious signs of a trap. But he didn't see any of those either. "Well, if it means anything…*I* don't want you to go."

"Ok," she muttered as she pushed open the unlocked door. "But lets get out of this first, huh?"

She was tricky sometimes.

But it was what he liked about her–just when he thought he'd figured her out, she'd change the rules. Like when she started making him be civilized and change clothes every day, or made him stop putting babies in boxes for safe keeping while he worked. If he figured her, or "it" out, it'd probably be less fun.

The second they were over the threshold, the floodlights came on.

No, not a trap. Not a trap at all.

XYZ

As soon as the ship stabilized, they were both looking at the sensors. His ship was a baby, and didn't have barely as many controls as this one did, and he was at a loss as to what some of them meant. "I think we're in trouble," his mother muttered.

He knew what the red blipping circular thingy (he'd never learned Gallifreyan) meant. Something had locked on to the ship. "Can we shake it?"

Violet sighed. "No. The Doctor could. His ship could take it. I flat out know better than to try–FRED just won't handle it. Not in this reality." She started shutting systems down, presumably so the lock would do the least amount of damage. "Ok. It's a time lock. We may be able to get it to do some spatial movement once this thing sets us down."

"Do we want to?" he asked. "They have dad, and they're practically letting us in the front door."

Violet bit her cheek. "Ok. But the spatial movement may be a good thing. We may be able to at least keep FRED from being manhandled."

Something beeped further back in the ship–some strange reminder of the cloister bell on the Doctor's TARDIS. "Ok. Space movement's out of the question." She pointed to some switches and he got the mental note that he needed to shut them either to their lowest setting or off. He was thankful. He wasn't a fan of just sitting around, doing nothing.

"What about my ship?" He just thought about the poor little thing, hiding in a shielded room.

"How dimensionally transcendental is it?"

"Not very."

"Leave it then. FRED'll do his best for her." The centre column stopped moving and the glowing light inside slowly died. "I have a plan."

"Why am I afraid of this plan?" It didn't sound like his father's well-thought-out ones, from what little emotion he was picking up from her, namely in the 'hope this works' territory.

She looked around quickly, making sure everything that could be turned off was off. One more dial later and they were in darkness. "I'm, uh… gonna give them what they want."

Saul sighed, wondering if his mother was as great as his da made out. "It's not really a real plan, is it? You're just… making things up."

"Yeah," she muttered absently, walking to the doors. "But I learned from the best."

TBC… 

1. Chapter 12. Chapter 23. Chapter 34. Chapter 45. Chapter 56. Chapter 67. Chapter 78. Chapter 89. Chapter 910. Chapter 1011. Chapter 1112. Chapter 1213. Chapter 1314. Chapter 1415. Chapter 1516. Chapter 16


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